Skullduggery
by Atlin Merrick
Summary: The skull speaks. "It all started after I died. Life was good; it was me and Sherlock, Sherlock and me. For eight years we had a great thing going, we understood each other, we were simpatico. And then he showed up."  Slash, Sherlock & John  Also available in Danish! See my profile for the link please.
1. Chapter 1

**Skullduggery**

I'm an adult human skull.

You know what I look like, you've seen examples on the telly, I'm sure. We're all pretty much the same. Of course I'm a bit better looking than the average skull, tighter sutures, more elegant zygomatic arches, a particularly bodacious occipital bone.

My good looks aren't the point, though, the point is that while you're here I'd really like to get a few things off my chest. Well, I _say_ chest…

What I mean is that I'd like to talk to someone. Unburden myself. Clear my mind, so to speak. The long and the short of it is: I think I need a therapist. And guess what? I used to _be_ one.

Seriously. A good practice, too, over by the Royal Courts of Justice. Spent all day analyzing emotionally fragile, intellectually sterile, morally bankrupt barristers. It was a good living.

Damn. See, that's part of the problem. I keep getting side-tracked. But _that's _not the point either. The point—and I do have one—is that things have changed around here and not for the better. The tension is so thick you could smear it on toast. And frankly, it's driving me to distraction.

..

Okay, it all started after I died. (And _there's_ a story with some twists and turns, but we'll save the details of my demise for another time, shall we?).

Anyway, after I died, life was good. Good, steady, predictable. Well as predictable as it can be when you live with an autistic, manic-depressive with too many ideas and not enough outlets. (Those first years I was on the ingredient list of more experiments than I care to count. Did you think I was ancient based off my decrepit hue? Think again, I am actually barely eleven years older than my boy genius.)

As I was saying, it's been me and Sherlock for nearly eight years, ever since he discovered me at my own crime scene. (Don't worry, I was procured legally. Eventually.) Anyway, for a long time life had a blissfully steady rhythm, going something like this (by the way, I speak in italics, always have, always will):

"The barber was giving a talk at the convention, we know that."

_Barbers have conventions? What could they _possibly_ do there, style one another's hair?_

"Quite probably. So the barber was not at his shop when the salesman delivered the order."

_Salesmen deliver their own wares? Really?_

"Sometimes. But if the barber wasn't at the shop, of course he couldn't have used the titanium pinking shears to stab the salesman in the neck."

_Pinking shears? I'd like to see that wound. It sounds…decorative._

"Not sos you'd notice. And even though the barber's talk at the convention was curtailed that night, dozens of people claim to have seen him at the banquet."

_The banquet for barbers. The _barber _banquet? Oh now you're just putting me on._

"There was something one of the attendees said, something simple that I'm forgetting."

_A banquet. I'd like to go to a banquet. Have a beer, maybe two. It's been awhile, you know? Oh boy."_

"Banquet, banquet, beer, boy—Boy! Two boys! He's got a brother who's a chef, one of the acquaintances said they were always jealous of each other. It was the chef. Of course it was. He found out his brother was having an affair with the salesman—the same man the chef bought his knives from."

It goes like that most of the time. A bit of give, a bit of take. It was an easy life, a good life. Me and Sherlock, we were simpatico.

And then _he_ showed up.

You know who I mean. The one with the limp and cane. The one with the war wound. The one with those jumpers and the tea and the milk and the shopping and the tidying up. The little one. That soldier.

_God I love him._

Everything started _glowing_ when he got here, you know? Heck, every time they stood near each other a bright cold fire just about jumped off their skin, a blazing corona around both of them. For the longest time they couldn't see it, they actively _fought_ it, and frankly it half-near drove me to drink.

But with a little help everything eventually turned out all right, thank god, and it's been good for a long time now.

Except now Sherlock's gone and done that _thing,_ and John let him and _that,_ that's why I was hoping I could talk to you.


	2. Chapter 2

Oh good god!

Please, I love Mrs. Hudson to tears, I honestly do, but her timing today is _atrocious._

She's come and fetched me _again_ and for the love of Pete now is just not the time. I desperately need to talk to Sherlock. I really do. And John. But mostly Sherlock, because boy genius is being the exact opposite and if I had arms honestly, I would thrash him.

(Then again, I probably wouldn't. He would like it. (But that's another story. Several of them. I'm not sure you want to know.))

Anyway, speaking of liking it, that's why Mrs. Hudson sneaks into 221B and steals me. It's because she loves that rangy rat I live with, the one I am so mad at that I could just _thra—_

Right, yes. Focus.

Mrs. Hudson takes me because she knows it drives Sherlock mad and she knows that anything that gets his brain in a lather is better than his boredom. And when I go missing, he lathers, believe me.

I don't say that out of vanity (well yes I do), but I'm his…well I'm not exactly sure. Good side? Conscience? Moral center? All I know is I'm not just a bodyless lump of calcium, sodium, and phosphorus to Sherlock Holmes. I'm someone he can talk to. I'm someone he listens to. I'm his friend.

_Gah!_

Lord. Seriously. I have never met anyone in my life who gets as side-tracked as I do. My point, and I am trying desperately to make one, is that Mrs. Hudson spirits me away periodically not because I squick her out, but because Sherlock's ensuing hunt for me is a diversion for everyone—_especially_ SH.

(Let me just say that when you have no arms and no legs and technically not much of anything else, you do what you can with what you have. I have a mouth, so to speak, and I use it. That means if there's usually one word for something, I'll have eight. Opinions? Theories? Witticisms? I have thousands. Words: They're all I _can_ have. So Sherlock? He's many things to me: Sherlock. SH. Boy genius. That Idiot I Live With. Soldier's boy. And Tall Drink of Water—Drink for short. Anyway, just clarifying. So. Moving on.)

Now, here I sit, in Mrs. Hudson's _much _nicer flat, but this is just the worst time in the world to be here. I really need to be back at 221B because a Big Deal is going on over there and you know as well as I do that The Boys can barely figure out what's for dinner without me, much less—

_A knock!_

Oh, cross your fingers for me because I need that to be Sherlock. Or John. Or both. Oh…if it's both I could die happy.

And…no. It was just Mr. Carlton delivering a few groceries Beth needed. (Liz. Elizabeth. Lizzie. Ella-Bell. Bell. Hudson. My Dear Girl.)

Well there's nothing I can do from here, obviously, except calm down and wait. My dear girl hasn't even hidden me this time, so _if_ Sherlock would just come looking, he'll find me in a tick and I can try and fix this huge Sherlock-shaped mess he's gotten himself into. Again.

How does he do it? How does he _keep_ doing it is what I want to know.

…

While we wait, I'll finish the introductions, shall I?

I've already told you the non-essentials: Therapist…moved to London from American when I was twenty-two…died at forty-two…met Sherlock soon thereafter.

My name is Aurora Aurelia Abbington and yes, I hear your collective gasp from here. I know you thought I was male but I can't imagine why. Do _you _think a straight bloke would have written such a blow-by-blow (pun intended) account of my boys and their journey from flatmates to friends to fuck buddies? (I _say_ fuck buddies just because it's alliterative, but they're more, so much more, but I know you already knew that.)

_Moving on._

Anyway, you can call me Aurora, Rory, Triple A, or the damn Greek chorus for all I care because though there will be a lot of skull in this story, this isn't really about me. It's about John and Sherlock, and how Sherlock is messing up a perfectly good love story by being _extremely_ Sherlocky.

Basically, this all started the night Doctor John H. Watson asked Mr. Sherlock Holmes to marry him.


	3. Chapter 3

Actually, this whole mess started before Sherlock was even born. Maybe before there was air. But I can't go back that far because I have enough trouble staying on track as it is, so we'll start where it all started—or stopped—depending on your viewpoint.

The night John asked Sherlock to be his lawfully wedded husband. Or civil partner. Or whatever separate-but-equal status they're currently doling out in twenty-first century England.

Anyway, that night was amazing for a whole range of reasons, all of which I'll get to. First, however, let's define "amazing" by sharing some of its synonyms: _Surprising. Startling. Jarring. Shocking. Stupefying. Jaw-dropping._

Kindly do take that as something of a hint on how the day progressed. And don't say I didn't warn you.

_.._

_Surprising._

The first surprising thing was John himself.

The night before the night he planned to propose, John found that he was nervous. Yet since being shot, John H. Watson did not really _do_ nervous. As a matter of fact the last time he'd been _this_ tummy-butterfly twitchy the good doctor was thirteen and Jenna Braid had just kissed him under the mistletoe, pulled away to study his face, and then _started coming back._

But really what was there to be nervous about? John merely lived with an unpredictable man who had diagnosed himself with a profound and disturbing personality disorder. He, you know, only cohabitated with someone who had for fifteen years claimed to be asexual. He was just shacked up with a man who was so blindingly good-looking John was pretty sure he'd caught the fourteen year old across the street and the little old lady three doors up unabashedly checking out his ass. He simply lived with a man whose version of normal breakfast conversation often included the words maggot, severed, or shock therapy.

Really, what could John _possibly_ have to be nervous about?

But seriously, what was the big deal? Sherlock and he had already been together for almost two years by now. Two mostly, well, frequently, well, somewhat normal years.

Heck, people invited them over for dinner for heaven's sake (bring wine they always said, very fast; yes, please, that's all, just bring an_ unopened _bottle of wine). They went to parties now and again (John always returned Lestrade's ID, handcuffs, and current favorite tie the next day with many apologies). Heck, they even threw their own party once (only once, and John has no idea what the hell he'd been thinking, but they did manage to find every last scorpion before the guests went home).

Like we said, what was there to be nervous about?

It was the night before the night he planned to propose, his lover was downstairs in the kitchen hacking up a yak on the kitchen table (at least he'd put down butcher paper) with a four pound cleaver, and John was staring at himself in the mirror wondering why the heck he felt a little high-strung.

_Startling._

The whole _startling_ thing came at dawn.

On the morning before the night John planned to propose he woke at six a.m., a full hour earlier than usual. That's not the startling part really, neither is the fact that Sherlock had come to bed in the night and failed to goose John awake with the press of frigid hands against his waist or the insinuation of ice block feet between his calves.

No, the startling thing was the weather.

It was early spring in London, and while that could mean anything from a light jacket to scarves and gloves, on that particular April morning it was an unprecedented twenty one toasty degrees, a good six warmer than usual. The awe this inspired spread through the city like a welcome virus, strangers smiling at one another, winter clothes cast off with abandon, and crime positively plummeting (you get one guess who groused about that).

Even though they'd known one another for over two years, meaning they had experienced at least two full seasonal cycles, there was something about the balmy temperatures that unnerved John. When he thought _John and Sherlock_ he thought of misty rain and nightfall and woolen scarves. He did not think of shirt sleeves and a daub of sunscreen on the bridge of a pale nose.

But that was okay, it was good. He could do temperate. He could deal with squinting against the glare all day and wishing, just a little, for some cold rain. He wasn't nervous and he wasn't going to let a little thing like a perfectly beautiful day ruin his plans to propose to his sweetheart.

_Jarring. _

She didn't mean to put a hatchet into John's good mood, really she didn't.

But that's what Mrs. Hudson did when she showed up late in the morning before the evening John planned to propose and asked the good doctor if he could help her hang a painting. "I can't reach high enough," said the woman barely four centimeters shorter than the man whose help she was petitioning.

Even John deduced the lie of this, but with a shrug he gave Sherlock a shout, "Back in a bit!" and headed down to his landlady's flat.

Almost as soon as she closed her door behind them, Mrs. Hudson did two things: She politely offered John tea, and then she said the immortal words, "This is none of my business, but…"

Two hours later John's tea sat on the table in front of him untouched and corpse cold, and his brow was drawn into a ferocious frown.

"Now I could be wrong you know, so you really have to take what I've said with a grain of salt, Dr. Watson—"

"John."

"—Sherlock is very temperamental, as you know. Why in one week—this was before he knew you, of course—he went from absolutely loving my tuna and liver casserole to a raging hatred. Oh, doctor—"

"John."

"—you should have heard the terrible things he said. They don't bear repeating, honestly. But I'm going off track. It's just that I've known Sherlock a little longer than you, doctor—"

"John."

"—and I don't want to see you get your feelings hurt. Not that Sherlock would do it on purpose, mind you. He just doesn't realize what he's saying sometimes. And you're such a nice man and you've been so good for him, really you have. I've never seen him this happy, doc—"

"Mrs. Hudson, I really need you to call me John. You've just spent the last two hours kindly discussing with me Sherlock's erratic moods, predilections, and opinions on children, a flat tax system, pets, pop music, me, sex, and marriage. So please, _please_ call me John."

Dr. Watson's landlady politely waited until he had finished speaking before continuing. "—well really, you've been very good for him, you know that, don't you?"

John looked at the far wall. Wished for a picture to hang. "I had thought so."

"Oh but you have, really you have. Don't you doubt that for one minute. It's just that Sherlock isn't like your average run of the mill man. He, well he has strong opinions about things and it can take a lot to make him shift them, you know."

John tried not to rub his eyes, press the bridge of his nose, or bite his lower lip, all tells that he was frustrated, out of sorts, or having a very polite, very English nervous breakdown. "I had had some inkling, yes."

"Oh doctor, I've gone and upset you, I can tell. Would you like another cuppa to sort you out? We can talk about—"

"Mrs. Hudson, you've really been very kind but I'm afraid I have to go. I've got…I've got a few things planned today and I'm falling behind. Come 'round later if you still want help with that picture, all right?"

John's landlady walked him to her door, patted his arm as he passed. "You're doing lovely things for the boy, really you are. Just don't be in any rush about anything is all I really wanted to say. If it isn't broke you might as well—"

John pasted on a smile and briefly pressed at the bridge of his nose. "Yes. Thank you Mrs. Hudson. I'll keep that in mind."

On the other side of Mrs. Hudson's closed door John bit at his lower lip and took a deep breathe. He was fine. He was _fine._ He was _not_ nervous, he did _not_ care that there was no rain, and he would _not_ let a frankly very odd conversation jar him from his proposed plans for today.

_Shocking._

The shocking portion of the day came in the early afternoon before the evening John planned to propose to Sherlock. He was finally back home, leaning against the door of 221B and staring at the skull across the way, trying to put his thoughts together.

_What brought that on?_ was chiefly the main one.

He'd even expressed it, too, about an hour in to Mrs. Hudson's Advice for the Lovelorn, or whatever that…that anti-pep talk had been.

"Mrs. Hudson, why are you bringing this up now?" he'd asked. She had gone on a twenty minute tangent about Sherlock's opinion on London cab drivers and onions (not the two together, but separately) before finally answering. "It's just that you seem…like you're…thinking about something. Very loudly."

And that was all he could get from her. When he asked if Sherlock had put that thought in her head she had bobbed that same head 'no' so hard he was sure he'd heard her subluxate her spine.

John frowned at the memory strolled toward the mantle, casually calling out for Sherlock, then calling out again. Both times no answer. Good.

"So what have _you_ got to say?"

The skull (That would be me!) looked at her little soldier with soft, gentle, expressive eye…um, sockets.

"Because I really—"

John's mobile rang, and it would be correct to say the ring was insistent.

John let it trill a few times, wondering if maybe Sherlock was actually around, but when no door in the flat slammed open—Sherlock always answered John's mobile; after all it could be a case and maybe Lestrade had idiotically forgotten Sherlock's number or maybe sunspots had fried the circuits of Sherlock's own phone—and no consulting detective emerged to paw at the device, John pinched it up between his fingers. Hesitantly he answered.

"This is John."

"John!"

"Oh, hello Greg. What's up? Have a case for Sherlock?"

There was the sound of Lestrade putting his hand over his phone's mouthpiece, then mumbled words. After a few moments he returned. "Sorry about that. No, no case right now sorry. I know, I know, Sherlock's probably driving you mental, isn't he?"

John opened his mouth to answer, but Lestrade plowed on. "Sherlock's really the reason I call. Well Sherlock and you, the two of you, actually. Do you have a minute?"

John felt the palm of the hand gripping the phone start to sweat.

"I…may."

More mumbled words to a clueless underling across town and Lestrade was back. "Sorry again. I just wondered if you had time to get lunch some time this week."

John felt his heart rate slow a little. He wiped his perspiring hand on his trousers. Then he remembered Greg's earlier comment. "Sherlock _and_ me? At lunch? You said you were calling because of Sherlock and me."

Mumblings, more of those mumblings, which were now very slightly driving John 'round the bend. Or the garden, whichever. "Look, Greg, I've got to—"

"Sorry John, I'm sorry, this place is just, I don't know how anything gets done sometimes. Look, no, I don't want Sherlock along actually, I just wanted to have a quick talk with you _about_ Sherlock. And you. Sort of."

John wiped his other hand on his trousers. "Is Sherlock in trouble? Has he done—"

"No, no, it's nothing like that. Look, this is awkward to talk about on the phone. Can I just take you to lunch tomorrow and we can—"

John wedged the mobile between his ear and shoulder so he could wipe both hands on his trouser legs. Apparently his _ear_ was also sweating because suddenly the phone squirted off his shoulder, clattered to the floor, and hung up on Lestrade. Of course. Of course it did.

For a moment John stared at the silent thing, waiting for it to turn shrill with ringing. When it didn't immediately chirp insistently he lunged for it and pressed the off button quickly, as if disarming a violent criminal.

Then he dropped it on the table and took a step backward. Then another.

John was pretty sure he was in shock and he wasn't even sure why. It's not that Greg had actually _said_ anything. Not really. He'd just sort of—wait, had he been talking to Mrs. Hudson? He must have, they were chummy really, rather more than they should be John thought, eyes narrowing as he groped through recollections of any conversations he'd ever heard between them.

No. No. John shook his head. No, forget it. He was going to forget it. And _it_ was pretty much the whole day so far. He just…it was good. Everything was good.

John looked at his watch. It was late afternoon before the evening on which he intended to propose to his sweetheart and though he was a little nervous, and the day was a touch too warm, and people seemed to be coming out of the woodwork with rather more thoughts about his relationship with Sherlock than he thought strictly necessary, John decided he was just going to shrug it off and soldier on. He was an ex-soldier. He _knew_ how to soldier on _god damn it._

_Stupefying. _

It really was all fine. Just fine. It truly was, for the next twenty minutes actually. Then the whole stupefying portion of the day began when John turned his mobile back on so he could text Sherlock.

He ignored the voice mail waiting from Lestrade, and started to mentally put together his text to Sherlock when a text from Mycroft popped up.

_Need to talk._

_- MH_

John's palms? Slick again like _that._

_About what?_

_- John_

The answer came far quicker than it should have.

_Too personal to discuss via text, John._

_- MH_

John tried backing away from the mobile. That he was holding. In his hands. His spine pressed against the mantle before he realized what he was doing.

_WHY?_

It was forty-six seconds before Mycroft replied. John knew that because he knew his pulse was pretty much twice as fast as it should be and he'd counted ninety two heartbeats.

_Sorry. Am texting between the creative tortures of my dental provider. You must put your plans for this evening on hold, John._

_- MH_

How in god's name did Mycr—never mind. After two years he was amazed he still even _thought_ that question.

_I am not changing my plans for the evening Mycroft. They are _my_ plans. Please bugger off._

This time the delay was a mere ten seconds.

_John, I know my brother. There are things we need to discuss before you ask him—_

John stabbed the mobile's off button as if plunging a knife through a felon's black heart. He shook his head, stupefied, bit his lip, and pressed at his eyes.

"What is happening here? Seriously?"

John turned around, looked at but did not see the big, black, wide, expressive, sympathetic eye sockets of the skull. Who remained respectfully silent, you may notice, while he worked his way to a more direct question.

"No, seriously, that's all I've got. What's happening here?"

The skull cleared her throat, carefully planning her words so that she could do the most good, change lives, make the world a better place.

_Don't propose to Sherlock, John boy._

John shook his head in tiny arcs of agitation, sort of stuttering. "Wh-wh-what?"

_Oh sweetie, you need to hold off on the bended knee. The marriage lark. The wedlock stratagem. The—_

"STOP! JUST STOP!"

The skull stopped immediately. Silence fell like something heavy. And silent.

John rubbed his eyes, bit his lip, pressed at the bridge of his nose. Then, very softly, so softly you'd have to have nothing but a skull, quite possibly, to hear the faint words. "Why? Just…why?"

The skull was not completely sure he was speaking to her and so she—

"I'm talking to you, so you know, why?"

Oh.

_Well, John, sweetie, um, why yourself?_

John opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it. Resisted the temptation to speak obscenities. Closed it again.

Deep breathing followed, and then this: "What now?"

The skull knew she wasn't doing this quite right, but she was nervous so kindly cut her a little slack okay?

Wait. All right. Focusing now. Sorry. I'm just a little sensitive right no—um, _we_ are just—oh never mind.

_John, my dear John, why do you want to marry Sherlock?_

Finally, a conversational gambit he understood, an actual question, a touch of sanity. From a skull. A, you know, dead…skull.

"Because I love him. And it's what people do. When they love someone."

More silence for awhile while the beings in 221B thought about this. Then John smiled at nothing in particular, reached into his pocket, pulled out a very small velvet drawstring bag. He tugged it open, dropped a ring into the palm of his hand.

He smiled down at the ring awhile and the lines on his face smoothed away, and dark blue eyes got wide with memories.

"This was my grandfather's ring. He wore it every day for fifty three years, 'til the day after my grandmother died. Then he gave it to me for when I got married." John curled his fingers gently around the warm metal. "The symbols around the edge? I don't know if you could tell, but they look like little eights tipped over on their side. That's the sign for infinite, that. The mark for forever. For boundless. For unlimited."

John opened his hand, stared at the small circle of silver. The jeweler who'd cut the ring down so it would fit Sherlock's slender finger had done such a flawless job that John couldn't tell where the cut had been made. "…and the symbol for never-ending. Like my…like I…"

You didn't need a body, arms, legs, or even a heart to feel John's longing.

"I'll ask him tonight. Because I love him. All right? Because I love him."

_All right._

_.._

_Jaw-dropping, _our last and final synonym for amazing.

Perhaps you've noticed that we've gone on for over three thousand words about John's day. About John's friends giving John advice. And through all this we've barely talked about the prospective groom in question, he's really had only a bit part in this whole story. That needs to change, don't you think?

So let's let our other hero enter heroically, shall we, with the drama and flare for which he is so well known.

"Mr. Watson! Come here, I need you!"

John blinked once, twice, then turned toward the windows facing Baker Street. He dropped the ring into his pocket, went to the glass, peered out.

Down below stood a rakish Sherlock Holmes, in rolled up shirt sleeves. At his feet stretched what looked suspiciously like a very large dead animal. Wrapped in a tarp. So it wasn't, you know, obvious.

(Did we say 'enter heroically'? Maybe we meant, um, dramatically. Or memorably. Okay, maybe we just meant predictably.)

John watched Sherlock look up, spot him, then gesture wildly, smiling wide.

In the early evening of the evening in which John intended to propose to his flatmate and his friend, John smiled back. It was all good. Everything was good.

..

Except the part about John putting his back out? Not so good, not so good at all.

"—and when I said _pivot,_ I'm afraid you really needed to pivot John." Sherlock perched on the edge of the couch and rubbed the doctor's spasming back lightly.

John closed his eyes, tried to sigh with long-suffering but breathing deep hurt. Breathing shallow hurt too, actually.

And though he wanted to, John very carefully did not complain about inappropriate pivoting or about the inappropriate buffalo carcass that still lay just outside the door of 221B. Did normal people have to carefully _not_ speak of buffalo carcasses? John didn't think so. To play it safe the good doctor simply grunted.

Sherlock gazed at the carcass just outside their front door. So close and yet so far. He sighed wistfully. Well he was going to have to do something about the beastly thing, wasn't he? Couldn't let it just rot out there in the foyer. Maybe he could get the neighbor's Sheltie over here for a really epic feast.

Sherlock frowned briefly, having actually managed to mildly disgust himself, something that may or may not have ever happened in his adult lifetime.

"John I—"

"Sherlock would—"

Both men stopped talking, waited politely. Predictably they both forged ahead again at the same time. Then stopped again.

Finally, John said, "You first."

Sherlock patted and gently rubbed John's back a little more—behavior that would have been wildly out of character two years ago. "No, it's fine. Do you want some paracetamol?"

John grunted into the couch cushions again.

"Some tea?"

Grunt.

"Wine?"

Grunt.

"My undying love?"

John opened his eyes.

He'd had so many nice plans for tonight. Sure weeks ago he'd discarded most of them as clichéd, predictable, _boring._ And what had been left was as elementary as a little starlight, a quiet kiss, and a simple question. But the set up didn't really matter, did it? Just that question. That one, small, uncomplicated question.

"Help me turn around," John murmured into the couch cushions.

Sherlock felt guilty, there's no doubt about it. That buffalo had had it out for John right from the start, and that damn buffalo was here by Sherlock's direct invitation. So the detective was slightly keen on making it up to the doctor, on being a good boyfriend. That's why, when John asked for help turning over Sherlock studied the situation intently for several seconds, reached, and then more or less deadlifted John off the couch and up into his arms.

John's jaw dropped open in outright shock. Then, like a Victorian fucking maiden the doctor blushed clear down to his collar bones, and started swearing like a damn sailor. "Holy fucking god Sherlock you'll put _your_ back out, let me down damn it!"

Sherlock was going to be a _good boyfriend_ so help him and he was going to _make it up_ to John. That was why he ignored the other man's protests and slid one foot carefully but almost briskly in front of the other, until not quite a minute later they were in the loo. Carefully, as if his cargo were most fragile, Sherlock did at last put John down with a grunt.

The doctor glowered. The detective stared. The detective spoke. "A bath. Heat. For your back."

John frowned. Sherlock blinked tentatively. John sighed, dropped his forehead to Sherlock's chest, groaned when his back twinged. "This isn't how today was supposed to go."

Sherlock's hands wrapped around John automatically. Suddenly the detective felt very good. Very peaceful. He held John close. Like something he had always done, like something he always would do.

"I will."

John lifted his head, momentarily disoriented, thinking Sherlock had answered the thing he hadn't yet asked. "What?"

The detective shook his head. "Nothing," he murmured. "Thinking out loud. How was today supposed to go?"

John looked around the small space in which they stood. A surprisingly large number of very good times had happened in this room.

There was the matter of a few drunken manicures last year (or was it the year before?)…there'd been at least two tickle fights here (Sherlock hit his head so hard against the side of the tub during one that he had a goose egg nearly the size of a goose egg for three days)…a badly sung birthday aria had made its debut and final curtain call in that same tub…and then there was the small matter of lazy or not-so-lazy shower sex times past counting.

It wasn't the roof of 221B, under starlight, or with soft spring breezes, but it was just as good if you think about it.

John reached for Sherlock's hand. Hesitant for barely a moment, Sherlock gave it to him.

Carefully, using those long, ringless fingers for support, the doctor went straight-backed—there was a pretty bad twinge along his spine anyway—to one knee on the floor.

John looked up into grey eyes. Sherlock looked down into blue.

"Sherlock Holmes." John cleared his throat with a small cough. "Good god, will you marry me?"

..

Please understand that I don't want to stop here. That it kills me to stop here. That _I_ would do to me what _you_ are thinking of doing to me for stopping here.

But please cut me some slack. I lived this (well, sort of), you didn't. For you it's a tale told on the tiny screen of your smart phone while you wait in line. For you it's abstract, distant, vaguely interesting, for me it's pretty much, well, it's my life. _They_ are my life.

I promise we'll get to the point of it all—The Answer—as soon as we meet again. Which will be soon. A few days, at most. Seriously.

Look, I _said_ I'm sorry. Really.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock Holmes started counting.

_One…_

That's what his brain does, unbidden, when it blanks out.

…_two…_

Though every one of John's friends saw this coming, knew he was going to propose to Sherlock almost before he did, the great detective? He hadn't had a clue.

…_three… _

Sherlock knows why you hate algebra based on the kind of lettuce you buy, but he knows almost nothing about relationships, and more specifically about romantic relationships _that have him in them._

…_four…_

So instead of answering John's proposal, Sherlock counted for what may have seemed (to both) like five or six hours, but what was really only that many moments.

…_five…_

And then Sherlock knew exactly what to do.

…_six…_

He went to his knees.

And there he was, holding John's head tight, screwing his eyes shut, and kissing his lover like a drowning man taking a desperate breath.

When John opened his mouth not to kiss back, but to laugh, Sherlock froze. And then that brilliant, deductive brain finally kicked all the way in and the detective knew the laugh was John's relief bubbling up—_he thinks this is yes—_and so Sherlock closed his eyes tighter, kissed harder.

Finally John kissed back, and it would be safe to say he was a little sloppy and eager, tongue poking into Sherlock's mouth as if it were the first line of a poorly trained assault force, and then just as quickly Sherlock was pulling away, standing up, then bending down and _doing it again._

And _it_ was dead-lifting John from the floor, a feat that shouldn't have been possible without spine-bending consequences but no one told that to Sherlock's back so, with a little twist here and an arm there, the detective lifted his moderately-incapacitated lover up and carried him off, just like the Victorian maiden he wasn't.

But unlike before on the couch, John so did not care this time. As a matter of fact he resembled that mythical Victorian maiden what with the actual giggling, the arms wrapping around Sherlock's neck, the nuzzling and kisses. The only thing missing really was a nice bodice for his lover to tear off. It says a lot about John's relieved state of mind that he probably would have put one on in a heartbeat if asked.

John Watson's wobbly state of mind got no firmer when Sherlock tumbled them both onto his bed (high on endorphins John didn't even notice the twinge in his back) and started covering the good doctor's exposed skin in frantic kisses—from face, to neck, to the palms of his hands, and back again.

As Sherlock came up to John's mouth a third time, he tangled their legs together, grabbed two fistfuls of the smaller man's hair and tugged until John's neck arched. He then bit tenderly _right there_ at the pulse point, then harder, and harder still until finally he heard John moan.

That was it, that was the sign Sherlock wanted. Previously frantic movements became briefly more so as the detective used his teeth to bite a small trail of across John's throat, across his jaw, and then with a very Victorian tug and tear of buttons, down John's shaking-with-more-laughter chest.

When teeth nipped at his ribs the doctor rolled away ticklish only to suddenly find all of Sherlock's weight pressed down on top of him, holding him still, holding him there, in a cage of long arms and legs, with cloud-grey eyes scudding over his face as if memorizing what they saw.

"Sherlock, I—"

The man so named clamped a hand over John's mouth, held it there, went suddenly still, waiting. And really that should have been John's sign, but it wasn't, because John wasn't quite seeing, John was only feeling.

So he pushed out his tongue and licked at Sherlock's cold hand, laughing but silent.

For a moment the detective just watched that face, felt the quiet laughter and the warm tongue against his palm and then he kissed his lover by kissing the back of his own hand. The funny thing is, John kissed back, passionately, and though tongues and lips didn't touch _something_ did because by the end of it both men were hard and more than ready.

Sherlock certainly was, thought not quite for the same thing as John.

The detective wriggled down the doctor's body, grabbed at his belt buckle, his pants, amping up his actions as he went along, using passion as a cover, as a decoy, a diversion from what was really happening.

As soon as John was naked Sherlock stood up and yanked off his own clothes, gracelessly tripping a little before climbing back on the bed and lunging for John's cock with his mouth.

But then there was the good doctor's laughter again—so much laughing, so much fucking _joy_ in him now—and he started to say something so again Sherlock reached up, slid his hand over his lover's mouth, then nipped at the skin of his own knuckles, pressed a bruising kiss against his own flesh.

Again John kissed back, grinding his hips up against Sherlock's hips, moaning against his lover's hand.

Time, time, time. It was time.

Sherlock moved down John's body, took his cock in his mouth quickly, sucked hard, until John started thrusting fast.

They hardly ever did it this way, quick and sloppy, without much build-up or teasing, so John was already more than ready which was good, just great, perfect.

Sherlock moved up again, assumed the time-honored position, pretending that that little bit of his own spit on John's cock was enough lube but it was far from it. As John pushed up and pushed into him, Sherlock's body went hard and washed cold with the pain, a pain that was the very opposite of pleasure but the very definition of penance.

_Again,_ he thinks, he needs it to hurt again, he needs to _pay _again.

So Sherlock clamped his hands low over John's waist, held the other man tight and still and under the guise of another kiss he rose to his knees just enough for John to withdraw and then he shoved his tongue in John's mouth and rolled, until he was on the bottom, John on top.

_Again,_ he thought, grey eyes gone dark as storm, and opened his legs wide, pulling John against him.

Sometimes Sherlock likes pain, John knows that. Little pains—scratches, bites—or bigger pains—the riding crop swung hard—so he doesn't even think about what's happening but later he will, and later he'll feel as bad as Sherlock does now.

But right now? Right now John took the invitation and pushed into Sherlock at the same time as Sherlock pulled, ramming him home hard, and the lack of lube meant the friction was off-the-charts good for John but Sherlock? He was thrashing under his lover, eyes closed tight and _scratching_ at his own belly and chest, thrusting his hips up to meet each of John's thrusts and moaning, good god he was moaning and then that was it, John was coming hard and reckless, almost as noisy as his lover.

It had started so fast and was over so fast that for longer than the sex even took John lay on top of Sherlock, disoriented, heart pounding, mouth kissing lazily at one angry red scratch mark, and then finally, after several minutes and a dozen kisses John said, "Thank you. And thank you. And also…thank you."

Sherlock didn't reply and at first John thought he was drowsing, then the doctor knew that he wasn't because suddenly it was absolutely silent in that room.

Absolutely _silent._

Sherlock wasn't breathing. Sherlock, it seemed, was holding his breath.

Heart suddenly tripping hard, John joined him.

For the space of ten heartbeats no one moved, no one spoke, and everyone expressed their growing tension by simply _not breathing._

Then John asked, because John is, was, and will always be the more courageous: "This…this wasn't you saying yes, was it?"

Again John held his breath. If Sherlock pretended for even a moment he didn't understand the question, if he played a word game, or was intentionally obtuse, John was pretty sure he would get up and walk out the door of 221B buck fucking naked.

But though Sherlock is a brass-plated idiot sometimes, he's not a fool. He didn't pull his Sherlock shtick, not here, not now, not with this man. Instead he softly said three words that sounded like both apology and confession, "John…I can't."

John Watson waited patiently, because that's what John Watsons do—they're patient with children and sick people and brass-plated idiots, but no matter how long he stayed still and stayed silent there were no more words from the man beneath him, no more _god damn words._

Sherlock could feel John's muscles going hard, feel the minute tremble of a body under tension, and he knew he had to say something, anything at all, but suddenly it's two years ago, it's the night before they first made love and all Sherlock can think now is what he thought then: _why?_ Why would anyone want this body, this brain? Who could possibly _need_ what he has to offer?

Let's take a moment to revisit a few things Sherlock remembers having offered his lover over the years:

* Sherlock had tried making John breakfast in bed once. He'd burned the toast, under-steeped the tea, and forgot John doesn't like eggs with running yolks. John of course said nothing more and nothing less than, "It's wonderful, thank you."

* Sherlock bought John a birthday present the year before last, something he actually knew John wanted—except Sherlock had missed John's birthday by four months. Of course John loved the gift.

* Sherlock, in the name of some god damn experiment or other, has unintentionally destroyed John's favorite tea mug, John's favorite scarf, John's only photo of his father in uniform, John's second favorite jumper, John's dinner, times past counting, and half of John's peace of mind. John complained about every last one of these, and then apologized later with kisses.

So again, why _why on earth_ would this man want _him?_

"Why?"

Sherlock's grey eyes were somewhere else, seeing things John couldn't see and so couldn't refute. "Why?" the doctor asked again. "Why, Sherlock?"

No answer of course, because when he needs the words most is so often when Sherlock has none. But after two years don't think good old John hasn't learned how to trick them out.

"Is it me?"

Sherlock's eyes focused fast and he frowned at the doctor, affronted, as if John wasn't allowed to imply such a thing about John. "No, no, not you, no."

Keep pushing and Sherlock will keep answering. "Because if there's something wrong with me that I can—"

Sherlock pushed John onto the bed, rose to his knees, agitated, naked, gesturing. "No John it isn't you it's not you how could it be you? You're perfect. You. Are. Perfect. Of course you are." Sherlock's chin and wildly waving hands fell, as if strings had been cut, and he mumbled, "So why on earth would someone like you want to marry someone like me?"

Now it was John's turn to be affronted. _"Someone like you?_ Explain that little bon mot, if you will. What, or who, is someone like you?"

Too much, it was too much, and John could see in Sherlock's eyes that he was shutting down, pulling away, so time for another trick, and the good doctor had _so many._

"Never mind, I've got to get up, I can't stand th—"

Sherlock quite literally threw himself down on the bed, one long arm and one long leg falling hard across John. "No no no no no no, don't go, don't go."

Sherlock dug his face into the doctor's neck, breathed in, breathed out, waited for his heart to stop hammering but that wasn't going to happen any time soon so he babbled against his lover's warm skin.

"I can only do one thing John, just one: See. That's all I've got, that's my bag of tricks. If I was blind tomorrow I'd be nothing more than a skinny man with a funny face who has the really bad habit of saying nasty things to strangers."

Sherlock pressed his nose harder against John's skin, took another deep breath, soldiered on. "I'm an idiot and I know I'm an idiot and my god the fact that you stay here amazes me every other day of my life. Those alternate days I just sit and stare at you and can't believe you want to be here, that you choose me."

As he rattled on it was clear that Sherlock was almost not talking to John anymore, he was talking to himself, talking himself out of what he knew he could never have—probably didn't deserve: Normal, just…normal.

"You can't choose me because I won't let you. There's not enough here to make a lifetime from John. There's not enough _me."_

_Oh screw the tricks. _John was done with tricks. Now he was just fucking pissed off.

He pushed Sherlock away (gently, because even in a small rage John's polite, damn him), sat up in the bed and glowered down at his lover.

"If you have some illusion this ends here you're wrong. You don't get off that easy. You don't get to decide for two, and you don't get to give up or run away or tell me we're over, do you understand?"

Sherlock started counting. Of course he did.

John let him.

…_five, six…_

A small voice, a fragile voice. "All right, John."

And the breath he hadn't known he was holding hissed out of John in a slow and shaky stream. "Good. That's good. That's …good. Thank you."

* * *

For the next few hours in that flat they were two islands separated by a sea of silence.

Then, as it always will, the tide went out and Sherlock found John in the kitchen and he talked. He rambled on about experiments he was in the middle of and experiments he wanted to do. He followed John into the sitting room and chattered about cases he'd had before they'd met and cases he'd wished he'd had. Then he curled against John in John's bed and his conversation was about places they should go, things they could do, and after awhile _that?_ That turned into an over-large dark-haired child finally exhausting himself into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Hours later in the dark and quiet flat John Watson lay on the couch, the skull—that would be me!—perched on his chest and surrounded by two warm hands.

"—and so what do I do now?"

My little soldier had given me the short version _and_ the long. Quite the story. I swear, sometimes it's all I can do not to march Sherlock around the regimental square. As a matter of fact—no, never mind, moving on. John asked a question and he needs an answer.

_Well, John, you co—_

"I mean, how do you make a man believe in his own self-worth, damn it?"

_Well really you can't be—_

"I can wipe runny noses, and set bones, but even after all this time I'll tell you this: I can't figure out what's going on in that crazy head."

I waited.

"I'm done now."

_Okay then, well—_

"I mean he's the boldest man I've ever known, you know? If you've been out there with him you've seen it. He can practically fly he's so fearless."

I waited.

"Yet he's so damn fragile, so breakable."

I waited some more.

"I'm done now."

And waited.

"I mean you can hit the man with a lead pipe and he stays up."

Still waiting.

"And then you can ask him to marry you and he crumbles like a rag doll."

John stroked my head over and over with those warm hands.

"Okay, I'm really done."

_John, I'm not su—_

"I need to show him what he means to me."

I said nothing.

"I need him to know that he's more than just that brain. That amazing, stupid brain."

Still nothing.

"That he's a dozen other things."

_A hundred._

"A hundred other things."

_A thousand._

"A thousand! That he's caring when he wants to be, funny when he tries, that he's wise not just smart, good, not merely great, that he's his own worst enemy, that he's—"

_Sherlock._

"Yes, oh yes. He's Sherlock. He's always and forever Sherlock. And that's all he ever has to be."

John sighed deeply and it was like riding the high seas for a moment.

"But how? How do you convince Sherlock Holmes to marry you? How do you show him why he _should?"_

And that's where John stopped. Stopped everything. Stopped petting me. Stopped talking. Stopped thinking. Just stopped, finally, too damned tired to do more.

Remember awhile back when I asked if you'd listen? And you said yes? Remember that?

Good, great because now that you've listened, now that you understand what's at stake, well now I need your help, I need your ideas, your wisdom. I really need to know what you would do in John's place.

What would you do next? _Please, tell me what would you do?_

_

* * *

__The skull is asking. Please...won't you answer her?_


	5. Chapter 5

For two people swimming with emotional sharks, John and Sherlock were sure doing a lot of devil-may-care fucking.

It was barely fourteen hours since my little soldier had asked problem child to marry him, and they'd already done it three times. They were right in the middle of number four and I'll confess the particulars were a touch new.

You've seen Sherlock. He's all elegance and grace, right? Except right now he was slumped boneless and low on the couch like a naked, ragged drunk, hips hanging off the edge with legs sprawled wide, John kneeling between those thighs, pounding away and just about _growling._

They'd been pretty much going at it just like this for the last one hundred years—okay, maybe ten minutes—and frankly I was (hugely turned on) confused. Was this make-up sex? Relief-they-were-still-together sex? Was it—

_"John!"_ Sherlock threw both arms over his head, dug his fingers into the couch cushions and arched his back like a bow.

The man in question didn't reply, just tucked chin to chest and pounded a little harder, while Sherlock thrashed—"J-J-J,"— arms and legs shaking—"oooooo"—the word a smear of garbled sound—"hhhhhnnnnnnn."

With mutual growls of need and frustration both reached for Sherlock's cock at the same time, one man's hand fisting around the others, and it took just three sloppy, rough yanks in unison before Sherlock was coming with a guttural moan.

John slowed his pace but didn't stop moving until Sherlock's body started to relax. Once boy genius' breathing evened, the good doctor pulled out, sat on his heels and…so help me, just shut down, an automaton without power.

It was quiet like that for forever. I couldn't even hear them breathing, which freaked me out because breathing—breathing is only boring _if you can breathe._ For someone like me breathing is…it's the sweetest music there is.

Finally Sherlock sat up, and I thought he'd say something, I thought…in hindsight I don't know what I thought. What happened was that Sherlock looked John in the face, looked at the erection between his legs, back to his face and so help me he _said_ nothing and he _did_ nothing. Then after entirely too long he slowly, gently ran the fingertips of one hand down John's cheek, got up, and walked away.

Okay. I…I can't even. I don't—no, seriously. What was that? What _was_ that? Can you explain it to me? Using small words? I was a therapist for nearly twenty years, I should know what a box of crazy looks like but this I don't get. What are they doing? Because it's definitely both of them doing it.

But what is _it?_ Mutual flagellation? I would expect that of Sherlock, but of my little BAMF soldier? Never. What I really need is to, well damn it—

_John._

He was still on his knees, back to me, chin to chest and staring at nothing.

_JOHN._

The room wasn't cold, as a matter of fact the heat was working a treat for once but I could see my little soldier shaking.

_John. John. John._

I wanted to shout. I wanted to run around the place and bite some ankles. I wanted to holler at everyone in plain English, _What the fuck, guys?_

_Joh—_

Finally my BAMF boy moved. He lifted his head and turned, looking in the direction Sherlock had gone. And for awhile that's all he did. Then in slow and almost painful degrees he dragged himself up on the couch, slouched in a position much like Sherlock's, and stared at me.

I stared back at him so hard his nipples should have been smoking, but he didn't see me.

I saw him. Every inch.

Look, I don't get off on any of this second-hand mind you (liar liar liar), but I really do love looking at my boys and even now, under these circumstances, how could I not?

Despite what he'll insist John _is_ small. Five foot seven (I still have to think about the conversion…um, one hundred sixty seven centimeters and some change) isn't pint-sized but it is diminutive, and if you don't think that makes a man sexy you are so clearly not a straight woman. Um, well a _dead _straight woman. A dead straight woman's, um, skull.

Anyway. Moving on.

Slouched there, body blushed and sweaty, muscles swollen from the exertion, sandy hair tousled as if he'd just crawled from bed…look, there's not much to do around here and I get my distractions where I can and right now I was staring hard and I was getting an eyeful of seeing and then I was finally _seeing_ what I was seeing.

That raging hard-on that was going nowhere? That absolutely fine erection that could have won awards if they were, you know, giving out awards for boners? That bit of proud and lonely flesh answered at least one of my questions and that was this:

_Why did Sherlock leave before you got off, John? He's a selfish git in lots of ways but he's never done that before._

And the answer was? Sherlock had nothing to do with it, this was John's doing. This was all on John.

Look, John and Sherlock? They're both damaged goods and don't think they aren't, but I used to believe they were screwy in completely different ways. Now the tardy realization had hit—they're messed up the same way, veer in _exactly_ the same direction. And that direction my friend, is martyr.

Sherlock's not good enough for John, he says, blah blah blah. John's so golden he'll sacrifice himself for Sherlock et cetera et cetera. Old old old old old _oooold._

_Senseless self-sacrifice so you can say 'I tried?' Lazy git. God damn you._

Oh crap. Did I just say that out loud?

John's distant gaze focused fast and those deep blues eyes blazed up at me.

"Excuse me?"

I huffed. _Huffed._ Now that I'd started I was actually mad. Mad at my little brave soldier. A total first.

_You heard me._

John's brow furrowed and despite himself he stood, unconsciously reaching for the jumper I love the most, the long brown one that makes him look even smaller than he is. Does he know what those jumpers say about him? Does he even realize that—

No, stop it Rory. Stop. Okay. Stopping. Stopped.

He slipped the floppy thing on, but not before I noticed he'd finally gone soft. Thank god. I did not need him whispering right at my ear, knowing that _that_ was down _there._

Anyway, I was about to give him a piece of my mind, don't you think I—

"What the fuck is it to you?"

Oh. Well. Hello cranky.

"I don't recall asking your opinion on this."

My goodness, someone was very—

"I know what I'm doing."

Ah, so here we go.

"I know exactly what I'm doing."

Fine. I'll play along.

_And what is that?_

John's brow furrowed. John's eyes blazed. Tendons in John's neck stood out like little straight-backed soldiers.

_Right. Great plan John._

The good doctor turned his head, looked out the window, his jaw working.

_Fucking the situation into submission is a very good idea._

"It's not _submission_ god damn it!"

Sure, okay, _now_ my little lionheart gets BAMF.

_What is it then?_

Good god I could hear the grinding molars from a foot away.

_John. It's not his submission I'm talking about._

The grinding stopped and again that frown and blazing gaze was aimed at me. "What?"

_Showing him how much he means to you by becoming less than you are? By giving him what you think he wants? By wearing a very unstylish 'Kick Me' sign? Where'd you get this remarkably bad idea, sweetie?_

The iron in John spine turned to rust and he slumped, forehead pressing to the mantle. "Oh god."

Arms. Just…arms. Give me two and I'd jump for joy. Give me even one and I could—

"What am I doing? What have I done?"

_You're swimming with sharks little love—pesky emotional sharks—and you panicked._

He said nothing.

_It's okay. It's fine. We're not done here. We're not even close._

"I just thought that if I…if I showed him…Jesus, what? Was it physical affection? Not really. That he's irresistible…god that sounds ridiculous the second it comes out of my mouth. I have no idea what I'm doing. None."

_You and six billion other people, sweetie._

John stood, his back a little straighter.

"You're right. Yeah."

_What is it you're trying to say? Lay it on me in ten words or less, right now. Now, John. What? What?_

When I was alive I used that trick in my practice all the time. Don't give them time to think, get them to push it out, hard and fast.

"That I need him. That oh god I'm not perfect. That he's overthinking things. That if getting married is a mistake it's fine. No one dies. It's reversible. That it's silly to not even try."

John got taller. Straight as iron, just as beautiful.

"Right." He glanced at the kitchen clock. "Right," he murmured again. He stroked my head several times, smiled, waited for me to say something.

That's another trick I learned. When they've talked themselves into a good place stop. _Just stop._

Still smiling John kissed the top of my head then took off like a shot, not quite late for work.

An hour later the flat was empty, they were both gone. An hour after that Mrs. Hudson came and took me (as I mentioned before; crap crap crap), and now I'm sitting here on _her_ mantle while she goes to answer the knock on the door and so help me if it isn't John or Sherlock or fluffy little unicorns with rainbow manes coming to rescue me I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

_

* * *

Damn. I have another question for you: Where the hell does the _angst_ come from? Because this chapter? It was meant to begin with fluffy sex and strawberry truffle for crying out loud. Well, fine. Moving on. We'll fix this. But speaking of moving, an update may be delayed (or may appear at any time) since I'll be traveling a bit (do the words Frankenstein and National Theatre ring a bell?), but I promise on the skull's extremely odd life that the story will continue._


	6. Chapter 6

_Everyone has a story, Sherlock._

That's how John started the letter. The letter of explanation. The letter that sounded like goodbye. The letter that was going to change everything.

..

Yet before all that there was banging, and it wasn't my boys doing it on the couch again.

As I may have mentioned, oh a thousand years ago, I am currently in Mrs. Hudson's flat, fidgeting on her mantle.

She steals me at random times to give boy genius something to do when he's bored or angsty, and that's really very lovely of her but no one asks _me _if it's a good time do they? No they don't. I really wish that sometimes, just someti—anyway, no, that's fine. It's fine. Moving on. (Although I swear Beth, my dear Elizabeth, alias Ella-Bell—she must be prescient because she thieves me always at the perfect time for distracting that tall drink of water I live with and when—_oh god finally she's answering the damn door.)_

"Is he here?" Sherlock barked, striding into the flat without meeting Lizzie's eye.

Before John, Liz was the only person I saw Sherlock treat tenderly, without premeditation or guile. Now he pushed past her as if she were a stranger and as she began to answer he shoved his hand toward her and hissed, "Sh!"

He was listening. As if John were some pup she might be hiding? As if he'd hear our little warrior breathing in a back room? I don't know. Like I said, in my years as a therapist I often saw what a box of crazy looked like, but what John and Sherlock are currently engaged in is a little new to me.

"Sherlo—"

He rounded on her, "I said _shhhh!"_

At least he retained some propriety. If Sherlock had told her to shut up I think Ella-Bell would have clapped him upside the head. And I know he knew that.

Cocking his head, he listened again but all he heard was Ella, saying quietly but not softly: "He's not here."

You didn't need eyes to see Sherlock's entire body go hard for a few seconds. Then he seemed to go boneless and for a moment I thought he was going to fal—and then he did. Legs folding under him, Sherlock sprawled on the floor at Ella's feet.

Poor Lizzie's got a bad hip, you know that, but my dear BAMF girl clenched her teeth and got down on the floor with problem child anyway—empathetic, prescient, psychic? I don't know, I just know Liz knows, she _always knows_ what she's doing with the boys—and rested the tips of her fingers over the tips of Sherlock's and asked, "What happened?"

When they first met, boy genius told John that he was capable of going for days without talking. Bah! So much smoke and mirrors. Sherlock's able to shut up only when no one is there to listen (take it from me, I know; once he discovered _me,_ he never _ever_ shut up), but ask him a question, have an opinion, god-forbid say something foolish, and it's getting him to close his mouth that's the problem.

So Sherlock dug a big fat letter out of his pocket, opened his mouth, and for the next two hours he, they, talked.

_.._

_Everyone has a story, Sherlock,_ John wrote.

You know that. Of course you do. From a woman with a ring polished only on the inside, to a man who's saved every scrap of paper on which his dead lover ever wrote, every single person has a story—a thousand stories—waiting to be told. Even those that seem perfect.

Perfect. Yeah, I'm still amazed by that one. You called _me_ perfect. Me? Good lord that makes me laugh. It didn't when you said it, no, but it does now, because for such a smart man, such a brilliant man, you sometimes know so little.

Because here's the thing, I'm far from perfect. If I _were _perfect, I wouldn't want to hurt you. I wouldn't want to make you weep. But I want both of those things so badly it hurts…and makes me weep. Of all the amazing things you are, this is the only part of you I can't tolerate: The part that _doesn't hear me_ no matter how loudly I shout.

Why are we here? Right here, right now? Because I asked you to marry me. And you said no. But for the most idiotic reason in the world: Because you think I need to be protected. From…you. From _you._ Oh Sherlock. I've seen worse things than you can possibly imagine—and I know you can imagine terrible things, I see it when you look at a dead woman's torn flesh, a man's shattered skull. Well imagine this my love: I too have seen terrors, I have _been_ a terror. I am so very far from perfect. Good god I'm more broken than you know.

Even with all your teasing, being your blogger's had a good side effect: It's made writing things down a lot easier than it used to be. So if you've got a little time love, let me tell you about an imperfect man we both know.

_Because everyone has a story, Sherlock. So let me tell you just a few of mine._

..

Sherlock stopped reading and looked at Ella, who looked wordlessly at him. I know everyone thinks Sherlock can read minds, but it's simple what he does really, he just looks. Looks at your face, in your eyes.

"It's not the same as goodbye," Ella said, because there was only one thing she saw when she looked in Sherlock's storm-cloud eyes: Grief. "Don't read between the lines, Sherlock, don't do that. _Read the actual lines."_

Such pale, pretty skin he has, my tall drink of water, you know? So why did it look so beaten, so bruised?

Lizzie waited for him to continue but once, twice, three times he tried lifting that letter from his lap, but he was weak as a kitten, systems were shutting down, he was giving up.

"Have you read the letter, Sherlock? All the way through?"

She asked him four times, but the only thing that brought him around was when she touched the paper in his lap. Instinctively he clutched at it, eyes briefly blazing. Then two crabbed hands opened, both clutching around nothing after the letter was gone.

And Lizzie started reading.

..

_The Story of the Good Bad Boy_

I was a good kid, mostly. I'm smiling right now because I can just about see you nodding at that. Of course John was good, of course he was. Still, kids are kids and sometimes my mom would have to give me and Harry a thump when we messed up. But I hated that, _hated_ it when she'd have to hit me. So while Harry ran rampant, I was always a very good boy. Did my chores, kept up with my school work, was polite.

Then one summer I suddenly got older.

I can't remember if I was fifteen or sixteen, I just remember that I was standing outside a nearby food & wine shop, waiting for my best mate to come out. When he did everything went into fast-forward: he shoved a bottle of wine in my hand, the shopkeeper yelled, and _bam_ Marty ran.

It doesn't take any kind of deductive reasoning to realize Marty'd stolen the wine—the wine _I_ was holding—and that maybe I had better run.

So I did.

And for several long years I didn't stop. Because here was something I learned that day, Sherlock: I _loved_ the feeling that I'd just escaped something. I loved the sense I'd just made it out by the skin of my teeth. _I could not get enough of it._

So I started stealing. Liquor, cigarettes, magazines, anything. Not because I wanted any of those things (most of them I snuck back onto the shelves later, for crying out loud) but because

I was deathly afraid of getting caught, and that? That fear, that _adrenaline,_ made every sickening minute worth while, even though, yeah, I was actually sick with fear half the time, puking my guts out before or after.

That never stopped me though. Neither did getting caught (twice, but both times I outran the shopkeeper). I think I was nearly nineteen before I stopped stealing. But that's just because I discovered a better way to get the rush I loved.

_It started when I watched someone die._

..

Lizzie stopped reading, looked up at Sherlock, who looked back at her like a child being told a terrible bedtime story.

She shook her head back and forth, over and over, as if to say, "No, you don't understand yet do you?"

And he didn't, because Sherlock still wasn't _listening._ He was panicking and reading between the lines and second-guessing and John's point? His point was completely eluding my problem child's clever, simple, stupid little brain.

"Should I stop?"

Sherlock looked at her as if _that_ was the worst part of the story so far. He shook his head back and forth, and even once Liz started reading again he didn't stop. For a long, long time he didn't stop.

* * *

_That's it, I'm officially addicted to writing about these characters. I now know this because, though I loved being on holiday for most of a month, I kept thinking about leaving this story in limbo. Sigh. Anyway, hopefully you're not reading between the lines and you get what Sherlock doesn't: This letter? It's _soooo_ not John's goodbye. Next chapter up tomorrow._


	7. Chapter 7

It's hard to swear without a mouth.

Well that's a lie. I can god damn swear with the best of them. What I really mean, obviously, is this whole thing is driving me to drink. Well I _say_ drink, but what I—

Never mind. What I want is for Lizzie to burn that letter—the letter John wrote, the letter that's trying to make a very good point but which is instead making Sherlock stupid and morose and all _thinky_ in his thinking place and frankly, if you want to know, probably doing more harm than good.

But Lizzie isn't burning the letter. And she's not saying, "You get the gist, John's not perfect, you're not perfect, but you're concave right in the spots where he's convex, so go get married, make babies, fight crime. The end."

No, Lizzie doesn't talk like that (no one talks like that anymore, just _me),_ and so she's not saying that and so Sherlock's not hearing that, instead she's reading John's letter to him, the letter which I'll let you get on with reading too because I know you want to know and so fine, fine, _fine_ if no one's going to listen to me until it's too late then _here,_ here you go. I hope you're happy.

..

_The Story of a Sawbones_

It was the month before I turned nineteen. I recall that now. It's funny how you think you'll remember some things forever, you can't imagine how you won't know where you were or how old you were when, well when your grandfather fell down in front of you and his heart stopped.

I don't know why I knew what to do. Probably too much telly. People drop like flies on the telly—you ever notice that?—and someone's always doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and screaming, "Live damn you, live!"

Yeah, well reality's not like that is it? It's much worse. The fear, the panic, the certainty that if you don't do something—the _right_ thing—then the fire of a life goes out, and you? You're the one who let it.

I tried not to let it. For a thousand years (can you prove it wasn't that long? can you? then shut up, because it was, it was every moment) I tried to help him, revive him, give him my breath, but you know what? Sometimes the fire _wants_ to go out. Ideal Watson's fire probably stopped burning the moment after Livia Hammersley Watson did, and it just took his body twelve more years to finally turn to ash.

That day, the next week, maybe even for a month I didn't realize what watching him die had done to me. What trying to save his life had done to mine.

And what it had done was to take my weakness and at last make it a strength. Because of what use is it to be calm in chaos? To have a strange strength even when everything around you is breaking? In everyday life it _is_ no use, it's a liability, one that makes you steal a bag of crisps and run, just so you can feel your heart pounding and your pulse thrumming in your neck. No, it's of no use in everyday life, of course it's not.

But heart attacks aren't every day things. No, usually they're just one to a customer, like strokes and car crashes and land mines and falls from roofs. Such rare terrors need rare gifts and it's a rare gift to stay still in the eye of the storm, to be focused and alert and smart and do the right thing when around you bombs are falling, and somehow that's what I've always been able to do, even when I didn't want to, even when it hurt.

So that's my wordy way of saying that watching my granddad die—trying to save him and failing but failing…well failing successfully—was what helped me understand what I was meant to do with that strange part of me that needs the fear to feel fully alive.

I guess there's no point in this part of the story. Not the point I'm trying to make anyway. Maybe I just needed to tell you why I do what I do, why I became a doctor, why I joined the army. Why I'm me.

..

Lizzie paused for just a minute. Just long enough to rise slowly, hip stiff, and slide herself onto the comfy chair at her back. Sherlock watched her with wide eyes, waiting patiently. So patiently.

..

_The Story of a Gunshot Army Medic_, _the Psychosomatic Limp, and a Tendency to Nightmares_

I think I'm getting a little tired of my own story now. God, I'm a winner, aren't I? This—the details of exactly how imperfect your perfect man is—is getting so damned long that I've decided to combine things in order to cover ground a little faster.

But really what is there to say that the stupid title above doesn't?

Mr. Flawless got shot by a sniper while wandering where he wasn't supposed to be. He died for awhile because imperfect people do that. Fortunately I had friends who loved me. Amazing things, friends, especially when they know how to finally stop all that bleeding, and make your heart beat again, and just won't give up until they do both.

Then of course there's that little thing you noticed about me right off: the limp that had no reason to be there. I was shot in the arm for god's sake, so why did I limp when I was tired or stressed? I don't know. The psychiatrist couldn't say. Even you, Mr. Know-It-All, waved your hands in the air dismissively. Who cares I can hear you asking in frustration, it's all gone now, and that's mostly true but the point is _why was it there at all?_ A war wound. That I made up. With my mind. Perfect, Sherlock. _Juuuust perfect._

Just like the nightmares about things I've never done in places I've never been. You know that I hardly ever dream about the war, that my bad dreams are about everything but reality, that when I wake up screaming (there's a word I always find over-wrought when I read it; screaming, who screams? We shout, most people shout, I used to think, no one actually _screams,_ but that's a lie, I know it is because I've woke myself, I've woke _you_ dozens of times and it's because I'm screaming as if my heart is being taken from me still beating)… Anyway, where was I? Right, the nightmares.

Well, I guess all I have to say about them is that they're there. Another imperfect feature of imperfect me. Damn. This is going on too long, I'm losing my focus. Fine. I'll just finish up with the most important part, okay?

_The Story of You_

This, _this_ is the very best part. This is the place where I really do remember everything, from exactly how old I was (thirty nine years, seven months and eight days), to the weather (no rain, intermittent sun, breezy), to how I felt when I first saw you (no one looks like that—yeah, I don't know what I mean either but it really was the first thing I thought when I saw you).

Those first weeks we were flatmates, you were something simple and familiar to me Sherlock: You were excitement. You were a shout, a shot, a bomb, a stolen bottle of wine, you were a regular fix for my seemingly inexhaustible addiction.

Right from the beginning you made life thrilling as hell and really that's all I cared about. Sure you were interesting (I heard that snort _"Interesting John, is that all?")_ but in some ways I didn't even see you at first, I didn't see past the rush of the chase, the conundrums and questions, the buzz I (we) got from each case.

So yes, for awhile all you did was make life interesting and then, in slow and amazing degrees, you made life…you made it worth living. But here's the important part, the reason all these thousands of words exist: Sherlock, you not only made it worth living, you made _just living…_enough. I can't tell you how much peace that's brought me, how since I was fifteen I've felt that I was racing in place, that my heart would stop if I stopped and then I found that stopping—stopping right here, with you—it's what made my heart _start._

And because even when I'm up to my chest in the freezing cold Thames, or getting tackled to the tarmac by some evil genius, or listening to you swear as one of your experiments sets fire to the drapes, even then you are worth every effort, every challenge, every shout, every tear. You, as you are, right now, flaws and gifts, talents and tantrums. I would change nothing about you, nothing at all.

Right. Nearly there. But before I finish up let me tell you a few more things.

My limp isn't gone by the way. It comes back sometimes when I'm very tired or very stressed. But when was the last time you saw me limp, Sherlock? Yeah, you haven't. _You_ haven't. But when I was away at that conference in Seville awhile back, do you remember that? The one where I texted you a couple hundred times and called you in the middle of the night and missed you so much I really thought I was bleeding somewhere inside?

Let me tell you one little thing about that trip I didn't tell you in all those annoying texts and calls. I got drunk at the hotel bar and made a friend one of those nights. We bought each other too many drinks and roamed the streets for a couple hours looking for diversion and my new friend? He couldn't remember my name for more than a few minutes at a time; that's how drunk we got. So do you know what he called me? You already know, I know you do. He just called me gimpy. Yeah. Because even when I first walked into that bar stone-cold sober at five o'clock that evening I was limping.

And you already know that so long as you're with me I never dream. No, that's not right. I never have _bad_ dreams. I don't know why that amazes me but it does. That even when I'm asleep I know you're there, even when I'm dreaming I feel you close and so long as you're beside me I don't come untethered, I'm not lost.

Okay. I'm tired of writing. Maybe you're tired of reading . I could have summed up this letter in a few words really, but I guess I'm not that good a writer. You're the genius of this family—we are a family, you and me, even if you think we never can be, not really—so do me a favor, sum this letter up. Will you do that for me Sherlock? Right now, take a minute, breathe, and sum it up in your head, stop reading between the lines, stop trying to deduce hidden meaning—there is none, I promise you—and tell me in ten simple words what you think I'm trying to say here.

Then find me, Sherlock.

Find me. And tell me.

* * *

_Next chapter the humor's back. And some resolution, too. Probably one more chapter after that. I think. I…I think._


	8. Chapter 8

"_You sit back down right now."_

Without so much as shifting an inch in her chair, Elizabeth Ariadne Westminster Hudson managed to do three things at once: sort-of-kind-of-damn-well-growl, scare the crap out of Sherlock, and cause the man to sink instantly back to the floor at her feet.

"Now then," she continued, voice once more a warm contralto, "it's time to stop reading and thinking and flailing about Sherlock. Now it's time to talk."

You could _hear_ problem child's thoughts they were so freaking loud, contrary, and insistent, but those deep-set eyes of hers held his, and held his, and somehow snapped and glared and even _leaned_ forward and dared Sherlock every damned dare he cared to name, but mostly they asked him—_Are you brave enough to open that silly little mouth and argue with me, boy? No? _No?_ Good._

"So my dear, I know that your very first thought is to go gadding about and looking for Dr. Watson—" One extremely bad-ass mother fucker in a frilly little frock paused for dramatic effect, then continued, "—but that's not what you're going to do. What you're going to do is tell me a little bit about what we just read."

That brown-eyed gaze lanced through Sherlock like silver needles, pinning him in place. Only once she blinked was he able to actually open his mouth. Nothing came _out_ of it mind you, but it opened.

Ella sighed and maybe I'm the only one who realized that all of this? Their stupid, messy relationshippy _stuff?_ It had affected her far more than Sherlock knew. Sherlock? He really has no idea how much she cares about him, about them.

"Just a few words, Sherlock. Tell me what John wanted you to know. What are those few words he asked for?"

Sherlock's mouth opened a little more. Then even more than that. At this rate _I_ was going to be able to fit inside that yap no problem. But words? Still nada. Nothing. Zip. Sherlock Holmes, struck mute. Quick, buy me a lottery ticket, hell has frozen over, and I think I just saw a unicorn prance past the window.

"Come on now dear, you can do it."

Not possible. Not even possible for that pretty puss to open wider and yet it did, as if in a moment he was going to just damn well _reach_ in there and drag some words out in his fist. At this point I think I was about to start jabbering out answers for him when finally, _finally_ something happened. Boy genius grunted.

"Uh."

Lizzie and I looked at him so _hard_ with encouragement I think we both strained something.

"Guh."

Good, there was a whole additional letter with that one. Keep going, 'Lock, keep going.

"Gah, I—"

No one was breathing, not even Sherlock, as we all waited for the words to form. "I—wh—to—wai—uh."

I have no clue what the hell he was trying to say, and as an ex-(and most excellent)-therapist that embarrasses me. But Lizzie knew right away. Of course she did. I told you about her, that she gets it, that she just _knows._ "You're scared that if you don't go flying out the door right this minute Dr. Watson's going to slip away into the ether, disappear as if he'd never been."

Sherlock looked like someone had poked him in the arse with a jack knife he was so surprised. Then he frantically bobbed his head up and down, back and forth, until I got nauseous watching him. Finally he realized he probably looked like a man with the DTs and stilled, whispering, "Yes. Yes. Yes."

Ella took a deep breath, let it out quickly. She glanced at me, held my gaze, then looked back at Sherlock. "He won't, I can promise you that—" Her hand flew up in a staying motion. "No, he hasn't talked to me, emailed me, texted me, called me, written me, or in any other way contacted me with his plans." Lizzie frowned, as if disappointed she had to state the obvious. "But Sherlock, a man like Dr. Watson does not say _find me,_ and then make the finding all that hard. Think about it. He's given you a little something to focus you, settle you, a little gift. He's given you a mystery, Sherlock."

Oh my dearest dear Elizabeth. Do you see why everyone loves her? Do you?

Ella leaned over her knees, and though I know her hip twinged, she kept the pain out of her face. "Go look for him Sherlock, but while you look, think about how you'll give John the only gift he asked for. What will you say to him when you find him? Don't find him—_do not find him—_before you know. That would be so selfish, so small. You're better than that."

With that Ella withdrew that staying gaze of steel by turning her head, looking out her window. So help me Sherlock groaned and slumped in relief. And then didn't move.

_One, two, three, four—_by the time I counted to six Lizzie turned back and said, "Well go already you silly git. _Go."_

It took another three seconds before he stood, turned, and flew out the door like a lanky bat in a battered dressing gown.

..

Sherlock's not an idiot, but he does an excellent imitation. Did he really think John would be casually sitting on the sofa at 221B? When he burst through the door was he expecting a cup of tea and a "Sorry, love"?

All right, to be fair you have to eliminate the obvious, I guess, and there was nowhere more obvious than their flat. But even though it took thirty seconds for him to learn John wasn't there Sherlock didn't actually leave.

Right, I didn't learn all of these details until later, but even without the particulars I could have told you what would happen when he walked through that door.

He did something he hardly ever does outside a case: he used his imagination. Used it to imagine what tomorrow and the day after and the day after that would be like.

He sat down on the coffee table and he took a deep breath—tea, honestly, the flat smelled of tea, how can an entire flat smell of a tannic little beverage—and in that breath was John and in the exhale was the thought _when will it go away? How long can I make the smell of him stay?_

And then he saw it. Draped over the arm of the red chair there was, of course, a jumper. There's _always_ a jumper somewhere. John seems to shed them like little cocoons.

Sherlock smiled.

The grey-and-burgundy one on the chair was a favorite (honestly, he says that about all of them; except the oatmeal cable-knit, never the oatmeal cable-knit) because of that time just before Christmas when John was helping with that experiment and then the explosion happened and because John had been the one holding the detonator cap ("I've disabled it John." "Oh my. I guess it was the other one.") he was the one with the splitting headache after.

Anyway, the migraine pills took care of John's pain but the only thing that could take care of Sherlock's guilt was waiting on John hand and foot. How that turned into John seeing how far Sherlock would go to show his contrition neither of them could say, but eventually it had involved the detective, over the course of several hours, bringing the doctor five cups of tea, four pieces of toast, a third pillow, several shots of whisky, and then providing a floor show that consisted first of Sherlock waltzing with the grey-and-burgundy jumper as if John were in it and then, in a fit of inspiration, well, kind of having sex with it at the foot of the bed to John's wide-eyed and progressively randy amusement.

Oh yes, the grey-and-burgundy jumper was definitely his favorite.

Sherlock stood and went towards that jumper now and would have touched it, was _this_ close to doing so—but he stopped just before his fingers grazed the wool.

Picking up that jumper, holding it to his face, _smelling the heartbeat of his life in its neck,_ well that would clearly be the behavior of a man who'd given up.

But Sherlock had a little mystery to solve, didn't he? And everyone knows the great Sherlock Holmes never gives up on those.

As if.

* * *

_So there was humor! And the barest whispery hint of sexy times! Next chapter there will be biting. Certain riveting behaviors in public. And Sherlock's gonna find something. Could it be John?_


	9. Chapter 9

Sherlock makes a very large, inelegant chicken, I'll have you know.

I say this because he proceeded to run around London like a headless one almost the instant he left 221B and while I only learned all of this later, again, I could have told you how it would go. And I could have saved him so much trouble if he'd just asked me for advice.

I could have told him where John was. Because I knew. I just did.

But some things you just have to find out the hard way, I guess.

..

There were some places and people Sherlock dismissed almost instantly when he went to look for John: Mycroft, the Yard, the pub 'round the corner from their flat. None of these had special meaning for John, and Sherlock knew that wherever the good doctor was it was somewhere…right.

Even if it was actually wrong.

He stood at the foot of the stairs in that cold, vacant house and it was a safe bet that a place where a felony murder had been committed would be considered wrong by most. But this? This had been their first crime scene together and so even though Sherlock knew the chances were slim John was here, he ran up the stairs of that empty house and into the low-ceilinged room where the Pink Lady had perished. And though he expected (and was rewarded with) nothing, Sherlock's heart still fell precipitously when that's exactly what he found.

"Think."

Instinct took over then, because that's what it's there for and so Sherlock did what he always does when deducing, he unfurled the fingers of both hands, ten little vanes aching to feel a whisper of wind, a hint, direction.

What they felt instead was chilly in that sad, silent place. There was nothing to look at here and so nothing to see, touch, smell, feel and so as quick as he had flown here he fled, without knowing where he would go next, without so much as glancing around the room as he left (like an artist gazing critically at their own work, the detective often enjoys returning to crime scenes when things are slow).

Back down on the street he turned without thinking toward a quiet park nearby and as he walked he tugged out his mobile, looking for a number John had programmed into it and one he never thought he'd call.

..

"Thank you. Yes. I will."

She had been remarkably civil, he'd give her that. Sherlock knows down to his marrow that had _Harry _called _him_ under the same circumstances it would have been all he could do to not verbally flay her to the bone. And even if he resisted _that_ he'd certainly find some way to remind her that she did not deserve John, didn't merit even sharing his bloodline.

Then again, maybe not. One curse of loving John Watson was that it had made Sherlock god damned empa-fucking-thetic, and now it took just seconds to put himself in another person's shoes. And while empathy had certainly been a liability when he was young, still burning up with the crazy brilliance in his own head, he'd been so surprised to learn it wasn't a handicap any more, that it actually made him a little better at what he did.

And it apparently made him hold his tongue even when Harry didn't, even when John's sister jabbed in a minor barb amidst the commiseration.

And commiserate was all she could do. In the end he was left standing in the quiet park with no more idea where John was than before. But his feet had a plan and so he let them move him and they moved him to…

..

…St. Bart's.

Standing just inside the door he knew this was wrong, wrong, wrong. He'd known it even before he came, known that this place, with its morgue stuffed full of dead bodies waiting to tell tales, meant something to _him, _not to _them, _that he was resisting logic and that for John—

—oh wait. Oh, of course. Of course.

Suddenly Sherlock knew why he'd come here, why it made sense that he came here, why John would come here. Why _this_ place had to be the place.

Heart in his throat Sherlock moved right with casual slowness toward the ridiculously ancient, decrepitly slow lifts, then gave up all pretense and veered left, running like a bat out of hell up the stairs to the fifth floor, not even registering the sound of his own footfalls or heavy breathing.

He burst into the lab where he and John had first set eyes on each other, also not registering the details of the dozen heads that lifted from microscopes and turned in his direction.

Gazes raking fast over those faces, Sherlock registered only that none of the eyes staring back at him were dark, dark blue, that none lit with recognition. That none of them were John's.

..

Sherlock knows he's a genius. No, Sherlock knows he is a genius at this: He can look and he can _see._ More than that, he knows _where_ to look so that he can see, he always has. So why was he not looking in the right places now? Why, despite open eyes was he blind?

The answer was simple, so simple: John was gone. Of course he was. Really, why _wouldn't he be._

On the stairs between St. Bart's fifth floor and fourth Sherlock tripped, stopped himself from falling with a grab at the railing. He froze there, in that stairwell, and stared at the beige walls, brain ready to either take another step toward brilliance or to break apart—

_A man like Dr. Watson…_

—because you _do _know it's impossible to find what isn't there, no matter how fucking clever you think you are—

…_does not say find me…_

—run all you like, make all the calls you can think of—

…_and then make the finding all that hard._

Very suddenly, like a storm crashing into itself and bringing a rare calm, Sherlock hearkened back to the words of the third-smartest person he knew: Elizabeth Ariadne Westminster Hudson (yes, Sherlock really thinks this way, and yes the order is like so: Mycroft-Sherlock-Lizzie—only Sherlock doesn't call my BAMF girl Lizzie, only I do, and usually only after she's had an herbal soother because otherwise she gets a little tetchy when I—oh good lord someone stop me. Okay. Fine. Stopped.).

Moving on.

Anyway, Sherlock thought back to perhaps the second wisest thing Mrs. Hudson had ever said in his presence: _A man like Dr. Watson does not say _find me_, and then make the finding all that hard._

And it was true. Of course it was. John rubbed off on Sherlock, Sherlock (the old version) did not rub off on John, ergo John would not be petulant, sarcastic, or ironic. He would not write a perfectly lovely letter and then send Sherlock on a wild goose chase at whose end he would find only heartbreak. If John was going to leave he would have the courage to simply leave.

And so that meant John _was out there._ Waiting to be found. Waiting somewhere logical. And that logic should be clear even to someone as emotionally dumb as Sherlock (yes, Sherlock sometimes really thinks this way).

So that meant…oh. _Ooooooh._

The reasoning was indeed so clear as to be anti-climactic. The detective was amazed he didn't think of it instantly. Well that was fine. It was all…fine. He'd thought of it now.

..

Sherlock's pretty sure his heart has been everywhere but in his chest for the last three hours. It's migrated to the pit of his stomach, dropped with a desperate plunge to the soles of his feet, choked off the breath in his throat, and now—

With shaking hands he pushed open the door to Angelo's and the front table, the one by the window? There he was, just as he had to be.

—and now Sherlock's heart was on his sleeve.

The old Sherlock might have actually walked up to that table and casually uttered the idiotic words, "Well that really wasn't much of a mystery," but this was not that Sherlock. Mercifully that man was long dead, and frankly no one missed him, including the man who used to be him.

This new Sherlock, the one that had always been there really, right now all he had was just that raw and beating heart. There were no words at all, no pride, no shame, and no desire to drag this whole thing out one second longer and so he dropped to his knees on that black and sticky restaurant floor and he laid his head in John Watson's lap, wrapped his arms around the man's knees and he damn well cried.

There are dozens of things John wants Sherlock to do:

Slow down a little when they're running. Never abuse the violin again. Fight crime only on weekdays. Quit bating Anderson. Eat regularly. Stop shouting at the telly. Make sure he knows how to use a fire extinguisher if he's going to set the dishes on fire.

But John never, _never_ wants Sherlock to cry and if he could go back in time and undo all of this, go back just a few days and—what? Take it slower? Give Sherlock some warning? Listen to what their friends were trying to tell him?—well he'd do all of those things and more because right now feeling Sherlock's body shake against him hurt so damned bad John could barely breathe.

To stop the pain, to make things right, the old John might have responded on instinct just then, let his gut lead him. Yet despite what the self-help books may say, that's not always the wisest course. How the hell do you think John got here in the first place?

So this new John, he closed his eyes and, though he wanted to slide to that floor and make grand declarations, he instead put himself in Sherlock's place and thought, _Why do I weep?_

He didn't have to think for long, no of course he didn't. He's known from the first time this man kissed him that Sherlock's tucked away in some part of his great brain each and every kiss thereafter, storing them up, hording them for a time when there will be no more. For the time when John leaves him.

_How can you not know…how can you still not know that I will never, never go?_

More than anything John wanted to say those words but he's said them before, so many times. Why should Sherlock believe him now?

John lifted his gaze, away from his own fingers weaved into Sherlock's hair, and to the scattering of other diners, every last one of them watching the drama at the far-from-private front table. _Tell me what to say to him please,_ he thought as he met each eye, _tell me the right words at last._

Some of those people looked back at him with pity, others indifference, still others surprise, but in Angelo's eyes, as he stood tucked back in the corner by the cash register, the tips of all ten fingers pressed to his mouth, there was hope and encouragement and quite possibly tears.

And that's when John knew, apropos of nothing, that there _was_ nothing. Nothing he could say, nothing he could do that he hadn't already done. It was up to time now to do the heavy lifting. Time would offer the proof words couldn't seem to. All John could do was exactly what he'd always done. Love Sherlock, day in, day out. When it was easy. When it was hard. When he wanted to. When he a little bit didn't. That was all.

Finally John leaned down, curled his body around the head in his lap, as if he could protect the man there from his own pain. And he kissed Sherlock's temple, and despite himself thought about things to say, new things, better things, things that would _say_ everything but no, he just couldn't find the words, not the right ones. And then he heard them, clear as day, low and ragged and hoarse because the man speaking them was still crying.

"You're perfect."

John had to close his eyes and wait long seconds so that his brain could tease through the sounds of cars outside, his own breathing, Sherlock's breathing, and tell him exactly what he'd heard, and when it finally did all _he_ did was let his thumb stroke behind Sherlock's ear.

"We're _both_ perfect."

Maybe all the cars in the entire city of London had had the common courtesy to go silent all at once, and maybe John was holding his breath at this point, because this time he heard the soft words easily and the pain in his chest eased just enough so that he could feel his heart beating again.

"For each other."

Those last words were just so much white noise for awhile, washed away by the sound of John's own blood suddenly pounding in his ears. So at first he didn't respond, didn't say or do anything. Then, when he finally heard the words clear as a bell in his head and thought he knew what they meant and was about to say or do a great deal, Sherlock lifted his head and looked at him.

"Eight words." The consulting detective, the one who sets fire to things (including himself now and again), who fights crime at all hours (probably even in his dreams), gets stroppy with the people on the telly, is often unkind to violins, the one who runs too fast, thinks too fast, thinks maybe too _much…_that man grinned up at John and said, "You told me I could have ten."

John didn't know what to say so he didn't say anything, and then he _couldn't_ say anything because Sherlock rose, tugged him to his feet, then the tall man went again to his knees on that floor that's just a little too much like the one in their flat and so doesn't bear too much close examination, and taking both of John's hands he looked up at him and said softly, clearly, and very carefully, "John, will you marry me?"

It would be nice if I could tell you my BAMF little soldier had profound thoughts just then but he didn't. No. There were just two things going on in that beautiful head and they were: _He believes me. Finally he believes me._ The other thought was very simple, very elegant and it was this:

"Yes."

For the span of one heartbeat everything—perhaps the entire planet—was silent in delighted awe. Then off in the far corner of the restaurant Angelo squealed like his two year old granddaughter and did a victory lap around the cash register.

* * *

_One more chapter coming._

_But first, thank you Caroline, Caroline, Marie, Kimber, and Britters for sharing your ideas on where John might be. It so helped. And thanks Bluetehanu, Squashbee, Nessa Atalanta and a dozen others who answered when I asked in chapter four: "What should John do now?"_


	10. Chapter 10

I'm not going to talk about the sex first. I'm just not. That would be gauche and I'm many things—loquacious, distractible, enthusiastic, opinionated, amusing, dead—but I am not gauche.

I will say that if I ever write a book about my boys—and I should really write a book about my boys—the chapter covering the week after Sherlock re-proposed John's proposal should be called Baker Street: The Sexy Greatest Hits.

Because over that long week leading up to the wedding (you heard that right) they did it early, often, and _everywhere._ On the kitchen table and the floor, in the hall and the loo, on the couch, the coffee table, and the stairs.

I know, I know, that's not the unusual part. Because honestly over the last two years can you think of a single surface in this flat they _haven't _spread it on?

No, the unusual part was that after the third time I noticed a trend. After the sixth there was so much to notice I can't even tell you. Yet of course I'm going to tell you. That's the kind of relationship we have isn't it?

Isn't it?

...

But before I get to all of that, I need to get my head on straight—so to speak—and organize the facts so I understand how we got here.

The most important fact is this: A little over a two weeks ago Dr. John H. Watson asked Mr. Sherlock No-Middle-Initial-Given Holmes to marry him. Mr. Sherlock No-Middle-Initial-Given Holmes freaked the hell out and said no through the confusing medium of masochistic sex.

Then, instead of dope-slapping his lover upside the head and demanding a different response, John H. Watson chose to put on spiritual sack cloth and ashes in the time-honored fashion of martyrs everywhere. And Mr. No Middle Initial let him.

And if you pause right here and let it, your brain can fizz up with a hundred heartaches that could have followed from there. Faster than a smart retort, quicker than a long-suffering sigh that flat could have bristled with arguments that said too much, or gone mute with silences that said even more.

Sherlock, who's spent the last twenty years teaching himself with care how _not_ to care (and never quite succeeding), could have reverted to type and simply let his mouth do what it's always done: hold the wide, unwelcoming world at bay.

John? He could've acknowledged that, yes, though rather cherubic, he didn't sign on to be a damned saint. He could have packed his bags, grabbed his cane (because his leg would have been hurting; you know it would have been hurting), and curtly nodded his way out the door.

Fortunately, for me and for them, both of these men are men remade, different from who they were two years ago. So John didn't leave and Sherlock didn't drive him away. Instead John realized that victim-slash-saint was not a flattering look and so sat himself down and wrote a little letter.

God I love that letter, every shaky pen stroke, every scratched out word, every spot where he pressed his forehead to the paper because he needed the words to _come out_ damn it. It's not particularly lyrical that missive, and it wanders in spots, but it was written with grace and heart and if I'd had someone write me a letter like that when I was alive, I can tell you that I wou—

Never mind. Never mind. …moving on.

Well, you already know the rest, really. Every wall, no matter how big, is made of smaller parts, and with that little letter John finally succeeded in taking the last bits of the wall standing sentinel 'round Sherlock's heart and smashing those fuckers to ruins.

...

The drinks were on the house.

After John said yes and dragged Sherlock up off his knees, Angelo was so relieved he jogged round the cash register several times, kissed my boys twice—I think he's got a crush on both of them—and proceeded to open so many bottles of wine and pour so liberally that everyone in that place got absolutely plowed.

"Thith is very good wine!"

Angelo remembers everything that happened that afternoon, despite the raging hangover the next morning, and one of the main things he recalls is being very surprised Sherlock had a lisp. The other really big thing Angelo remembers is that John is an _extremely_ good kisser.

Many hours later and after several aborted attempts to leave the restaurant—there were endless well-wishes from most of the strangers, and some American woman kept topping up their wine glasses and shouting "Kiss!"—the boys stumbled home and got even more plowed, euphemistically speaking.

Which is to say that that's when the reliving of their sexual greatest hits began. While John will maintain he can't get an erection when he's drunk that's not technically true. He _can_ get hard, he just can't get, you know, un-hard very fast.

Kitchen table sex has a special place in John's heart, he can't tell you why. Maybe it's because the table's at just the right height for him to stand straight up and plow straight in, I don't know, but when they stumbled into the flat and Sherlock was still singing—

"—an' I'm getting married in the morning! Thomething thomething, thpruced up in me _priiiime!_ Girlth, come and kith me; show how much you'll mith me, but get me to the church on time!"

—and obviously lisping so magnificently, that John was getting ridiculously randy hearing it. So moments after the flat's door closed John helped his fiancé (!) tug off his coat and as Sherlock tripped around the sitting room randomly (still singing), John just followed him, peeling clothes off Sherlock's body, the well and truly sloshed detective not even, you know, detecting this, until his pants and trousers were bunched up around his ankles.

Naked but for those ankle-located garments, socks, and shoes, Sherlock looked down, cocked his head to the side and said, "Oh John Watthon, what are you doing to me?"

John didn't answer, just poked Sherlock in one shin then the other until the tall man lifted each lean leg in turn. John tugged off those slim-fit trousers and drawers, stood up—

"Are we going to have thex John?" asked Sherlock, rather bright eyed, "Because I think that would be very nith."

John didn't answer, just sort of herded Sherlock backward toward the kitchen, tugging his own clothes off as they stumbled along, stealing sloppy kisses, right up until the top of Sherlock's thighs pressed into the table off of which they eat, you know, food.

"Oh, thith is going to be marvelouth," Sherlock said solemnly, already knowing that John—who almost always has no problem lasting as long as they both want—was today going to be even more capable of going the extra mile and would keep Sherlock on the edge for a good, _good_ long time.

The sloshed detective was not wrong. After climbing up bare-butt naked (except for socks, John likes the ridiculously cute-slash-fuckable look of his pale and perfect fiancé (!) nude but for a pair of dark socks), planting each foot on a chair, and sliding his arse to the very edge of the table, Sherlock watched with rapt attention as John slicked himself up with a fair bit of spit (the chance of the drunken doctor finding some lube was infinitely less likely than finding the location of his own mouth), John took his own sweet time pushing his cock right up to the hilt in Sherlock's lovely, plump rump.

"Oooooh yeeeeth!" Sherlock groaned theatrically (he does not know any other way), flung his arms out to the side, and grabbed hold of the table edges. "Ride, cowboy, ride!"

For a moment Sherlock giggled hysterically, then his fiancé (!) followed his directive and started galloping hard toward sunset.

Sherlock did not shut up for the next twenty minutes. _Twenty minutes._

Oh good god if I'd had someone keep me on the very edge of coming for twenty minutes when I was alive I swear I'd have—

Never mind. _Cough._ Never _mind._ Moving on.

As I was saying, the detective was positively _gabby_ as his fiancé (!) humped happily away in that bodacious-yet-firm, big-yet-well-proportioned arse. "Oh god John! I have goothbumpth!"

John stroked his fiancé's (okay, I'm going to chill with the exclamation marks for awhile if you don't mind) hips and said nothing. That was fine, he was _hearing_ everything.

"There! You're there, right there! Oh god I'm gonna die John, thith feelth tho good I'm gonna die!"

John leaned over and kissed Sherlock's belly and, tangentially—considering what they were doing—wondered if that belly didn't seem just a teeny tiny bit bigger than it used to. Feeding Sherlock must be working, and as a matter of fact—

That train of thought was derailed instantly when Sherlock shouted, "Harder John, harder! Make my toeth curl!"

The good doctor was happy to oblige and so he widened his stance a little, canted his hips a lot, and pounded into that voluptuous detectivey behind for pretty much all he was drunkenly worth. Which was quite a lot.

"Ngghh!" grunted Sherlock at full volume, "Ngghhhhhh!"

John glanced down at the chair pressing against the side of his knee. Sure enough, Sherlock's toes were curled up tight in their black cotton socks. Grinning, the good doctor tightened his grip on his fiancé's (!) hips and started pulling his cock out nearly all the way before shoving that bad boy back in about as hard as he could.

"Oh my god John I'm theeing thtars, a million twinkly thtars!"

John could not possibly have rammed home any harder without possible injury, so he didn't, but encouraged mightily by Sherlock's garrulous input he started varying the pace of his thrusts from very fast to achingly slow.

In response Sherlock grabbed hold of the table edges even more tightly, arched his neck, and in the general direction of the refrigerator waxed positively _lyrical._ "John, oh John, John John I love you John. My heart John, it's pounding and pounding and I think I can't breathe, I can't breathe becauth it'th beating tho wonderfully hard John."

John maybe started to think about stopping, a bit concerned, but Sherlock squealed in possibly the most high-pitched voice his fiancé (!) had ever heard out of him, "Oh fuckin' god don't thtop, if you thtop I'm going to break into a billion pietheth!"

So John didn't stop and neither did Sherlock, not for twenty very long minutes. I can remember every single thing Sherlock said and every single thing they did during those twenty very good minutes and sometimes, when it's three in the morning and I'm staring out the sitting room windows, bored out of my skull (it is to laugh), the time can be made to pass very nicely if I just cast my mind back to the day they got engaged and had plastered-out-of-their-minds sex on the kitchen table.

"Oh good guh—guh—god John," Sherlock moaned, "can goothbumpth come because I thwear mine are!"

That might be my favorite line from that particular afternoon or perhaps ever, I'm hard pressed to choose between that and one Sherlock uttered later that evening (still a bit drunk): "Do you think you'd like the feeling of my cock in the sock in your arse or would that just be weird?"

Anyway, even pleasure can get to be too much and so finally Sherlock prised one hand off the edge of the kitchen table, put his fist around his swollen cock, and let the force of John's thrust drive his erection back and forth in his own spit-slicked hand.

I don't even have a heart any more and I swear mine was pounding and waiting and pounding and—

"John John JohnJohn_Joooooooooooooooooooohn."_

Sherlock came hard enough to shoot come right up to his own damn neck, so help me, and I think I was about to shout or something when John did it for me, uttering the first words he'd said since they came home.

"I—" he thrust once more into Sherlock's still-throbbing arse, "—fucking—" his toes curled, "—love—" he threw back his head, "—you!" and started coming.

I swear to god it took me three hours before I could have a single coherent thought in my head.

...

I could go on, you know I could.

Once the boys slept awhile (passed out), sobered up (dealt with terrible hangovers), ate something (John could manage only toast; Sherlock ate like a stevedore), then slept again (this time like normal people), they woke feeling rather fabulous and while they were heading down the stairs toward the shower and the loo, they spontaneously decided to wank each other off in the stairwell. John, tummy far more settled than earlier, fell to his knees as Sherlock started coming, opened his mouth and from a good ten centimeters away rather voraciously consumed everything Sherlock had to give.

After the shower and some food and a nap on the couch (Sherlock hadn't had a case in over a week, which was fine, his brain had been plenty occupied by other things, and John's locum work is at best hit-and-miss anyway), they woke up and I'm not sure whose idea it was but the end result was that John had apricot jam smeared about his naked person and Sherlock sucked it off him—special care given to belly button, belly, and erection—until the proceedings ended quite satisfactorily for everyone involved.

I could go on, you know I could, but there was so much more it's unreasonable to expect me to cover it all _and_ discuss the wedding, too.

Suffice to say that the sitting room's red stuffed chair is a tight fit when one man is sitting in it and the other is straddling him, impaled happily on a raging hard-on and grunting, "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes."

Also suffice to say that eating spaghetti off one another's belly's on the floor was as messy the second time as it was the first time they did it (last year? last month? I can't keep track anymore), and that it ended as orgasmically as it had then.

And frankly I'll just skip right over the stuff they did with Sherlock's great coat and John's striped jumper and the black lace corset with pretty red accents that neither of them can even remember buying.

I'll also not go into how happy I am that they gave up on the idea of doing it at the morgue, and in the alley back of the dentist's office that's over by Madame Tussauds (I was nervous enough they'd get caught when they did it the first time a couple months after they got together), and that they decided to forego a quickie in the loo at Angelo's ("I have a vague feeling we're starting to border on tacky now, you know?") and instead decided to continue their mating marathon safely within the homey confines of 221B.

I will finish this up by say just one more thing, John looks a lot cuter in high heels than I'd have thought possible but Sherlock—_oh god._

...

Do you see what you've done to me? You asked about the sex (didn't you? I could swear you did) and you got me completely derailed from the whole point of this chapter. And the whole point of this chapter was supposed to be about the wedding.

The wedding of Dr. John H. Watson to Mr. Sherlock No Middle Initial Holmes. (Basically I could happily say those exact words in that exact order until I'm dead. Which I am. But you know what I mean.)

Moving on.

It was a small wedding, and that was intentional and for two reasons.

First, they didn't want to have wait long. Even waiting a week seemed insane, and you can guess who it seemed craziest to, can't you?

"What if he changes his mind?"

It was two in the morning and I was recalling the doggy-style thing they'd done that night against the mantle and how at some point both of them had looked at me with _such _a look my hair—so to speak—had stood delightedly on end, when Sherlock breathed those soft words against my supraorbital foramen.

_Eh?_

(Sorry, he'd completely caught me off guard.)

"What if he changes his mind? I don't want to wait. I want to get married now. Now."

_Hu?_

(Look, it takes awhile to gather scattered wits when you have nothing left to keep them all in one place, okay?)

"I know better. I know that I know better. John's not going to change his mind. He's not."

_Uh, yeah._

(Don't say anything, you, just don't.)

"He's not going to leave or undo what's done, in my heart and my mind I know this, but, but…"

_You're excited, hon, you're just excited. You want it to happen now._

(*Phhft!*)

Sherlock sighed, petted my lambdoid suture with one long finger. "Yes. That's it. If I'm going to marry John—I am going to marry John—I want to marry him now. Right now."

_It's two in the morning. A slightly inconvenient hour for nuptials. And also if you marry John without Mrs. Hudson present I will thrash you._

That's the second reason the wedding was small. There just weren't many people they wanted to have there. Mrs. Hudson, John's sister and her current lover, Gregory Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes (I have a feeling about those two but I'm not sure), Angelo and his extended family, Mrs. and Mr. Merrick, shopkeepers over on York (he's a lot like John, only thirty years in the future) and that's about it.

So yes, this chapter was meant to discuss the wedding, the unexpected thing that happened at the wedding, and wrap this story up all nicely, but you went and asked about the sex (you did, I could swear you did) and I got long-winded (you did notice up top where I used the word loquacious as pertaining to myself; you _do_ know what that word means don't you?).

_Anyway,_ I'm tired and it's four in the morning and so let me just finish up with my thinky thoughts and regroup and we'll meet back here.

Then I'll tell you what happened at a very lovely Berkshire vineyard where Sherlock Holmes and John Watson invited a few friends and family to join them and proceeded to do something that looked a lot like getting married.


	11. Chapter 11

When you're getting married you hope for a pretty day. Even Sherlock Holmes does.

I'm happy to say that my tall drink of water, my darling boy genius, he got what he wished for, and then some.

…

The quiet wedding of Dr. John H. Watson and Mr. Sherlock Holmes took place in late April, one hundred kilometers mostly-west of London. The setting was a bucolic vineyard, one by some miracle available with very little notice for a very small event.

I expect that was Lizzie's—um, Mrs. Hudson's—doing; she took care of everything. Armed with Mycroft's credit line (she knows both Holmes brothers equally well, which would surprise one of them a great deal) my Ella-Bell not only scouted and booked the location, she directed the installation of the beautiful, understated décor; selected the food and wine; and extended the relevant invitations to the small band of invitees.

What Lizzie could not have done is cause spring skies to be blue and breezes temperate. Then again that gentle woman is such a bad ass mother fucker—today in a frilly burgundy dress—that frankly I would put nothing past her.

The boys were anomalously shy, nervous and quiet most of that spring day, and both were drop-dead gorgeous in nearly-matching charcoal grey cutaways, Sherlock with tails just a touch longer, John opting for a tie over an ascot.

Angelo's sister's wife was their vicar, and the ceremony they chose was in every way traditional (I don't think anyone but Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft saw that coming), with not one word of the wedding vows as found in The Book of Common Prayer changed. The only slight variation came when Sherlock unexpectedly went to his knees as he recited "with my body I thee worship," at the same time slipping the silver ring he'd had made onto John's finger.

Of the fourteen guests in attendance the only one who did not cry was my Lizzie. When you consider she has tangentially been on the front lines of most of John and Sherlock's relationship that is understandable. She was, no doubt, just damn well relieved.

After the ceremony but before the reception that happened almost immediately after, John took hold of Sherlock's now-ringed left hand and whispered, "Come along love, I have a small surprise for you."

…

They walked down a crushed gravel path, up a gentle slope. They could easily see their friends and family sitting down to the reception dinner on the lawn—the table decorated with sweet pea flowers, tulips, and a human skull (hi!)—could hear chatter and champagne and wine corks popping, and yet they were far enough away for privacy.

At the crest of the small rise John stopped walking, gazed skyward, saying nothing. It took just a few seconds before…

…Sherlock looked up.

For a very long time he didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't seem to breathe. Eventually John glanced at him. That's when he saw Sherlock was crying.

The good doctor sighed. This time Sherlock's tears…they were good. This kind of crying John wanted. He was a little embarrassed and giddy with the wanting of it, but making Sherlock feel this much joy—he'd never stop wanting that.

Wrapping an arm around Sherlock's waist John looked up again.

In the air overhead they swarmed and danced: Thousands upon thousands of honey bees, chubby little officiants buzzing their approval, brilliant in bright finery of yellow and black.

Sherlock could not look away.

He lifted a hand as a phalanx of bees flew low. The little creatures bumbled round and round him, then flew up again to join their buzzing kin.

Sherlock lowered his arm but not his gaze, pressed a fist against the beautiful ache in his chest. "You did this for me?"

John wiped gently at Sherlock's warm tears. "You already know I'd die for you…five thousand bees ordered online? Oh honey, that was a piece of cake."

Sherlock's chin fell to his chest and he giggled in a silly, shaky, bone-melting relief that wobbled his legs until they folded under him.

John followed him down onto the rolling lawn where they both collapsed onto their backs, arms spread, joined in the middle by their hands.

"I never saw this coming," the new Mr. Holmes said.

Sherlock giggled again. _Giggled._ He felt drunk, he felt like his body was made of something warm and soft and boneless. And he hadn't even _touched_ the champagne, good god no. ("I Sherlock Holmeth, take thee John Watthon, to my lawful wedded huthband…" Definitely not.)

"Which part?" the new Mr. Watson whispered.

John giggled. He _had_ touched the champagne. "All of it I guess. The running down dark alleys at two in the morning. The heads in the fridge and the beetles in the cereal. The success of the blog. The danger and the clues and the _fun._ But mostly you. Your passion. Your passion for _me._ The falling in love."

The bees had followed them down, skimming over the grass, dipping into the tiny white daisies scattered over the lawn. Sherlock peered at them as intensely as if they were tiny, beautiful clues.

"You, you gorgeous genius, you probably knew what would happen right from the start."

Sherlock held his hand out over a patch of daisies. Not for the first time or the last he wished he were covered in bees. He was aware this was an odd desire, but he didn't care. He knew one day he'd have hives and he'd hold the queen in his hand and wait patiently for her subjects to come to her. And in coming to her they would come to him. It's what bees do. Sherlock smiled. He wondered what John would say.

Sherlock's smile faltered and faded. For the very first time he realized that John would be there. That John would be there as Sherlock grew old.

The world's only consulting detective blinked a few times very fast. Suddenly his body was not soft or warm or boneless anymore, it was cold and sticky with sudden sweat. He felt dizzy and short of breath.

Mouth watering, jaw working Sherlock sat up on that grass, twisted away from his brand new husband, and he threw up. A lot.

Fortunately he missed the bees.

…

John rubbed Sherlock's back. Mrs. Hudson rubbed John's back. No one else had been allowed into the winery's very pretty men's loo so no one rubbed Mrs. Hudson's back.

"It's all right. It's really all right. It's just nerves."

Sherlock moaned.

"Or maybe it's something you ate? Did you eat? Good god I didn't feed you anything today did I?"

John frowned, angry with himself, then realized a man can't throw up something if he hasn't eaten something and so yes, Sherlock had indeed eaten and by the look of it—yes, John had looked; he's a doctor after all—he'd actually eaten quite a lot.

"Maybe you ate too much. Do you think you ate too much? And then the nerves just got you? That's all it is. It's too much food and, and…nerves?"

By now John's barely aware that he's patting Sherlock's back, he's instead intently focused on Mrs. Hudson patting his because it may be the only thing preventing him from having a sudden and absolute nervous breakdown.

_Why is Sherlock nervous? Is he having second thoughts? Oh god no. No, no, no. I can't live through this all over again, I can't._

"Sherlock, are you—"

"John."

"—is there—"

"John."

"—I mean are—"

"John."

Mrs. Hudson had called John by his given name exactly three times in his whole life and all three had just happened in the last two seconds in the men's toilets at a very lovely vineyard in Berkshire.

"John—"

(Four.)

"—would you step outside a moment please? I think Sherlock needs a little quiet time. I'll be right out."

The only reason John could think, much less stand up and move, was because Mrs. Hudson had stopped patting his back. John very much wanted Mrs. Hudson to start patting his back again and so he felt quite inclined to do whatever she said. Because honestly, if he had to go through the rougher parts of the last two weeks again he might—

"John."

(Five.)

John got off the floor of the men's room at a very nice vineyard in Berkshire and opened his mouth to say something to Sherlock—

_"John."_

John didn't know if Mrs. Hudson had any children so he didn't know if that tone was an innate gift or one she'd developed over time, but with one syllable she managed to convey quite enough to be going on with thank you. With just a glance back toward Sherlock—tall body folded over the toilet, head hanging down—John left the men's room of that very nice vineyard and he stepped out into the bee-buzzing sunshine.

…

Gregory Lestrade watched what was going on from a distance.

Mycroft Holmes watched what was going on from a similar distance.

Behind them everyone else drank and ate and laughed and discussed the merits of white wine compared to red wine compared to champagne and they gently waved away bees and talked about London and traffic and whether John and Sherlock were actually legally married (they were), and about whether the weather was unseasonably warm this year and a dozen other things that no one would remember very well later (because the white wine and the red wine and the champagne were all very good).

And while they watched from a distance, Gregory Lestrade moved slightly toward Mycroft Holmes, who moved slightly toward Gregory Lestrade, and then Greg said something gently witty and the two of them got to stiltedly chatting while they watched the small hill off in the distance as John paced on it, and then by the time Mrs. Hudson came out of the men's loo and walked toward the doctor a few minutes later Mycroft had made Gregory laugh and then Mrs. Hudson put her arm around John's shoulder and both men knew everything was fine then and so they wandered off along a narrow path and eventually completely lost track of time.

…

"Did you ever need something so badly for so long that by the time you got it you were exhausted from the wanting of it?"

My Lizzie and John started walking back and forth along that little rise—thankfully someone had already cleaned what needed cleaning—the bees dancing attendance around them. John heard Mrs. Hudson's words as she spoke, but didn't process them for several long moments as he felt Lizzie start to pat his back again. After a moment he nodded.

"Do you understand that that's all that's happened John?"

John thought about that. Did he understand? What was he understanding? He wasn't sure.

Lizzie figured that out before he did, and so she clarified. "He has no second thoughts, John. No doubts. The only thing that happened here is that Sherlock—and I'll quote—'just realized for the first time that when I'm old and fat and have more wrinkles than a fresh body found floating in the Thames, John's going to be there. John just said today that he'll be there. I never thought anyone would be there, Mrs. Hudson. I just never thought anyone would be there.'"

John had long since stopped pacing as Lizzie talked. His ears were hot. He wasn't sure why his ears were hot.

"So Sherlock's in the gents, um, puking from happiness?"

As if she were the doctor and he the patient my BAMF girl nodded. "Yes, John, it looks like he is."

Just as with Sherlock had before him, John found he was so overwhelmed that his bones went to mush and he sank down to the pretty green lawn. Lizzie and that hip, I tell you, the boys are giving it a workout, but she hiked her pretty burgundy dress up to her knees, got down there with John, and patted his back a few more times.

"Sherlock just got so happy he sort of went into shock. That's all John. Everything's good, very good. And about as normal as you two boy ever seem to get."

My BAMF darling smiled, kissed John's temple, and continued to pat his back until Sherlock came out of the loo a few minutes later.

...

John turned, looked at his lov—at his husband.

At his…husband.

Sherlock No Middle Initial Holmes was now John H. Watson's spouse. His better half. Significant other. Partner. Life mate.

John pressed a hand to his chest. He was, quite possibly, suddenly a little queasy and so wasn't really aware of Mrs. Hudson's gentle hand leaving his back or of her retreating steps, even as he stood and looked at Sherlock.

Is this what miracles feel like, he wondered? Like motion-sickness and bad shrimp and a hangover? Is this how it feels when your life finally, at last, makes perfect sense? When you want absolutely nothing more than what you right this minute have?

John Watson is pretty sure that yes, apparently this is exactly what a miracle feels like. Like you're about to throw up from the absolute perfection of it.

John's husband—in a still-flawless tuxedo, how on earth?—crossed the lawn, stopped in front of him and took both his hands. "Oh no, you too."

Sherlock sees everything, of course he does, but he especially sees John. And right now John's expression mirrored the one Sherlock knew he'd worn just a little earlier.

"Oh we're a pair, Mr. Watson," John murmured.

Sherlock grinned. "Yes we are, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock looked around them, again felt his heart kick hard in his chest as thousands of tiny _I love yous_ buzzed and darted everywhere. "You said before, 'You probably knew what would happen right from the start.'"

John nodded, "Didn't you?"

Sherlock shook his head. "I'm the blindest fool, John. Because I didn't recognize you, not for the longest time. I didn't know you were my miracle, not until you knew I was yours. And that? _That_ was my miracle. That you picked me, that you…_saw_ me. In every way that's important you always see more, John. You always see so much more."

About then a fat bee, its back legs saddled with pollen, landed on John's chest. It marched confidently across his light grey tie and as it trundled Sherlock had a brief urge to capture that symbolic little insect, hold it, take it home and press it behind glass. Instead he and John watched it shift its bright yellow baggage a little, then fly off.

Sherlock linked their arms. "You're going to be very cross with me in about thirty years, John."

John nodded slowly, "I expect that I will be. What for this time?"

They started walking back toward their friends. "Well, if a person holds a queen bee do you know what happens?"

John sighed for future John. "I'm going to find out in about thirty years am I?"

Sherlock weaved his fingers with John's. "Yes you are. You see, if you hold a queen, her hive will come to her. And so come to you. The thing about bees—"

_The End_

_They don't exist. I know they don't exist. And yet here I am, hoping very much that John and Sherlock grow old and wise and plump together, and that Sherlock's bees make the best honey in England, and that the boys eat it every day with toast and hot tea. And that they're happy. Most of all I hope that they're happy._


End file.
